Alternately generating adrenaline and ennui, Vertical Limit battles itself to a hard-earned draw.

| Mar 6, 2018

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 25, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 4, 2001

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 16, 2001

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 7, 2001

The pace of the movie rarely flags (neither does the idiocy, alas) and it's enough to warrant a marginal recommendation.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

This is a movie that means to keep you involved and, preferably, gasping from start to finish . At that, it certainly does succeed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 8, 2000

When the characters just shut up and dangle, Vertical Limit becomes one heck of a wild time.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

Certainly a movie in which people are forced to test themselves in unpleasant situations. But the people I have in mind are the people in the audience.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

But at its worst, Vertical Limit makes you weary with its stock characters and de rigueur explosions, avalanches, collapsing crevices and the like.

| Dec 8, 2000

There's a huge surplus of edge-of-your-seat whatevers in this thin-air thriller about a rescue mission on K2. But by the end, you can't tell who's got more bruises: the actors or your nerves.

| Dec 8, 2000

The film has unusually witty dialogue for a movie of this genre.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

Nearly all, from a gut-crunching helicopter drop to a literal cliff-hanger of excruciating tension, will have you mentally grasping for a lifeline, even if you fail to completely comprehend what's going on.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

The mountain-rescue movie Vertical Limit doesn't just operate at the height of ludicrousness; it also puts marshmallow Chris O'Donnell in the business of saving lives.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 8, 2000

The visuals are stunning, but that's not enough. They can't make up for this predictable story populated by cardboard-cutout characters. The film needs more rescuing than that.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 8, 2000

For all the pains that have been taken to plunk us vicariously alongside the frozen peril, Vertical Limit is mostly a joke that keeps getting unfunnier.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

One of the most thrilling - and authentic - mountain-climbing films in recent memory.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2000

The picture cuts from story thread to story thread, and in such a choppy fashion that we're rarely given the vistas that would allow us to take in the physical layout of the action.

| Dec 8, 2000

Made from obvious formulas and pulp novel conflicts, but strongly acted and well crafted.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 8, 2000

Lumbers from lardy exposition to climax overload.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 8, 2000