Man on a Ledge
Sam Worthington is on a ledge. Is he ready to jump off Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel because he’s measuring how far his career has fallen since starring in Avatar? Nah. Nothing that interesting. He’s playing an ex-cop who’s escaped prison to prove his innocence by showing he’s been framed by a dirty-rat tycoon (Ed Harris, way too good for this crap). While the cop’s brother (Jamie Bell) works the case on the ground and a negotiator Elizabeth Banks) tries to talk down our hero (what, you thought he was guilty?), a meanie TV reporter (Kyra Sedgwick) tries to goad him to do something to relieve the tedium. Man on a Ledge just sits there like a lump of breeding clichés. The shopworn script by Pablo F. Fenjves, who ghost-wrote the unpublished O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It: The Confessions of the Killer, gets no help from director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil). The torpid pacing of this latest addition to January’s cinematic casualties could cure an audience of insomniacs.
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