directed by martin campbell . screenplay by robert king and terry hayes , from a story by king . starring chris o'donnell , robin tunney , bill paxton . running time : 126 minutes . rated aa by the mfcb . reviewed on december 16th , 2000 . i can remember clearly the moment i knew " vertical limit " was going to be a disappointment . chris o'donnell walks through a camp at the base of k2 , the world's second tallest mountain . another climber , played by izabella scorupco , spots o'donnell . and that's when the look transpires between them . they look , and they look , and they look . so artificial and transparent is the scene that it would have worked better had scorupco been wearing a big sign around her neck reading " o'donnell's love interest " -- at least that would have been worth a chuckle . but " vertical limit " is short on imagination , and long on predictability and shallowness . it is populated by characters into whom very little thought has obviously been invested ; they exist purely to fill their roles in the paper-thin plot and , once they have served this role , they are dispensed with , one way or another . that's how you know that , inevitably , scorupco and o'donnell will end up together . or consider the mountaineer skip ( robert taylor ) . his purpose in " vertical limit " is to use his status at the k2 camp to goad others into joining o'donnell on a rescue mission . this accomplished , an arbitrary whim of the story shunts him out of the action , and he practically vanishes from the screen . no more inventive are the plot twists , most of which hinge on the canisters of nitroglycerine the characters carry with them as they speedily ascend k2 . it's bad enough that the explosive force of the nitro seems to vary depending on the needs of the plot ( at one point , an entire crateful barely destroys a shed ; later , a single canister nearly devastates a mountainside ) . it's even worse that the stuff seems to survive any amount of jostling , unless the story demands that it suddenly become a peril . but the sheer stupidity of the characters around it -- leaving a crate , which had been carefully stowed away , open in the sunshine for no good reason ; or , later , sitting five feet away from it when they know there's a good chance it might explode -- is positively criminal . to be fair , there are some good , tense moments . mountaineering is an extremely hazardous sport , and " vertical limit " effectively conveys the many disasters which can befall even the most experienced climber . one of the best scenes in the movie sees scorupco trying to save a fellow mountaineer , who is clinging by his pickaxe to the edge of a snowy ledge . as scorupco edges out toward him , the ledge slowly starts to break away , threatening to pitch them both into the abyss beyond . similarly , a scene where o'donnell jumps a wide chasm and barely manages to hook himself into the opposite mountain face is genuinely exciting ( even if , in reality , he probably would have torn his shoulders from their sockets ) . but the dangers become too repetitive , too quickly . there's only so many times a yawning chasm , an incipient avalanche , or the ubiquitous nitroglycerine can be brought into play and still make the audience anxious . director martin campbell ( " goldeneye " , " the mask of zorro " ) simply doesn't find a way to make each danger seem new and rivetting . of course , it's hard to expect much from a movie which borrows from sylvester stallone's " cliffhanger " from the word go . o'donnell plays peter garrett , a climber along with his sister annie ( robin tunney ) and father royce ( stuart wilson ) . while scaling a sheer cliff face , the ineptitude of a couple of novice mountaineers puts the garrett family in jeopardy , hanging from a single carabiner . royce , who is on the bottom , tells peter to cut him loose , since he knows the carabiner can't support the weight of all three of them . reluctantly , peter does so ; in one of the movie's most gratuitous scenes , we then see royce's body thud to the ground far below . three years later , peter is a photographer for the national geographic society . he and annie -- now a world-renowned speed climber -- are no longer on speaking terms , because she blames peter for their father's death . by coincidence , peter ends up in the vicinity of k2 at the same time as annie , who is helping billionaire elliott vaughn ( bill paxton ) scale the peak as part of a publicity gimmick . vaughn pretends that k2 expert tom mclaren ( nicholas lea ) is in charge of the ascent , but when bad weather hits and tom wants to turn back , vaughn goads him into continuing on . soon , the party is hit by a ferocious avalanche ; everyone is killed except vaughn , annie and tom , who fall into a crevasse . this leaves peter to mount a desperate mission to save the trio before thirty-six hours pass and they all die from pulmonary edema . beyond this point , " vertical limit " transpires in typical disaster-movie fashion : a variety of supporting characters are introduced , only to be killed off one by one to show how truly fearsome the situation is . there is a villain , of course , and there is an old eccentric ( scott glenn ) who proves to be the key to the rescue mission , despite having a hidden agenda of his own . it is clear that scriptwriters robert king and terry hayes have lifted this one step-by-step from " screenplays for dummies " -- there's not a single plot point you won't see coming a mile away . even worse , king and hayes demonstrate no flair whatsoever for dialogue . " vertical limit " is full of overwrought , scarcely believable passages . there is precisely one good line in the entire film -- taylor's description of scorupco -- and even that probably won't have as much meaning for audiences outside of canada . campbell does at least take good advantage of the tremendous asian landscape ; " vertical limit " is breathtaking visually , if in no other respects . but this is scarcely enough to save the movie as a whole . by the time the first wave of snow comes thundering down the mountainside , i found myself wishing it would sweep me out of the theatre , too . copyright © 2000 shannon patrick sullivan . archived at the popcorn gallery , <a href= " http : //www . physics . mun . ca/~sps/movies/verticallimit . html " >http : //www . physics . mun . ca/~sps/movies/verticallimit . html</a> _______________________________________________________________________ / shannon patrick sullivan | " we are all in the gutter , but some of us \ | <a href= " mailto : shannon@mun . ca " >shannon@mun . ca</a> | are looking at the stars . 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