Immediately goes there. Monument Valley, meet your comically brutal new opening.
Before the Fall
After the indignity of recently revisiting 2000’s Hollow Man and then seeing a Letterboxd mutual currently working their way through director Martin Campbell’s filmography, it immediately sent me scrambling back to one of my standby comfort watches to remind myself the new millennium didn’t open in a salvo of cinematic disasters. At least not entirely.
Vertical Limit was the first film I ever watched on San Francisco’s Metreon IMAX screen (then second-largest in the U.S.), and that theatrical experience has long carved a permanent home in a nostalgic little corner of my heart.
From its mesmerizing sound design, James Newton Howard’s gloriously over-the-top score (which I contend remains among his very best), and the unapologetic hamminess of it all, the picture yields consistent returns on every revisit.
It’s also the only movie a studio ever pathetically duped me into shelling out extra cash for the SuperBit DVD (ugh…).
The only rescue plan more insanely precarious than the fate of those being rescued.
No Notes, Just Nitroglycerine
Of course, the plot is as threadbare as to be expected of this type fare:
Estranged brother-and-sister climbers Chris O’Donnell (the most prominently nippled Robin in Batman history) and Robin Tunney (The Craft) are reunited at the base camp of K2 (really Aoraki/Mt. Cook in New Zealand + some dicey matte work) as she prepares to accompany a megalomaniacal billionaire (Bill Paxton) to the summit for a braindead publicity stunt to wave at the inaugural flight of his new airline.
Obviously, everything goes awry and we’re treated to avalanches, crevasse falls, and rescue teams incredulously schlepping canisters of nitroglycerine in their backpacks like they’re in a remake of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear—for Dummies.
No deep analysis needed here—just a big-budget popcorn flick that delivers exactly what it promises.
It might seem like a footnote now, but the flick cleared nearly $400 million in today’s money. You heard me right: Chris O’Donnell outgrossed a Mission: Impossible sequel that year, and deservedly so.
Sure, some of the special effects don’t really hold up after a quarter century (hell, maybe they weren't even all that acceptable at the time), but Vertical Limit remains a damn fine adrenaline rush.
Trigger warning: acrophobics may want to steer well clear.
Not pictured at base camp: sunscreen, modesty, or even a single FTG.
Peak Performances (and Some That Slip)
Paxton is clearly having the time of his life serving as the prototype for Elon Musk had he a shred of self-awareness and didn't outsource his dirty work to a personal army of Reddit sycophants. Even as a villain, I miss Bill Paxton.
Scott Glenn is also terrific in a supporting role as a weathered climber still haunted by the disappearance of his Sherpa wife years earlier.
And Aussies Ben Mendelsohn and Steve Le Marquand provide ample comedic relief as a couple of hippy climber brothers committed to serving as the mountain's resident Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.
Alas, not all the performances sing—you’ll know 'em when you see 'em—but much like Congo five years earlier, they add a certain old-school matinee charm... without the martini-drinking, talking gorilla.
There’s no turning back when your summit bid is sponsored by ego and bad instincts.
Horns at 28,000 Feet
And to double down one last time on Newton’s score—it really does deserve a special callout. The music does so much of the heavy lifting here; I’d probably have to dock this picture a full star (perhaps more) in its absence.
As melodramatic as it is, it’s perfectly attuned to the campiness of the picture, bombastic orchestral swells for sweeping helicopter shots of the severe terrain seamlessly giving way to bleeding emotional leitmotifs in the film’s more intimate moments. It’s genuinely worth a listen on its own (if you’re not already there).
Vertical Limit was never destined to become a cinema great, but it was wildly successful at the box office, and damn if it doesn’t claw its way to its own peaks with pure, unfiltered adrenaline.
And that ending, even with it so clearly shot as a green-screen afterthought, still manages to tug the heartstrings every time I see it.
Sure, the whole thing may look like a glorified Mountain Dew commercial at times, but it’s still miles better than cinematic brethren K2, Everest, and yes, even fan-favorite Cliffhanger.
Just hold your breath and enjoy the drop.
SUMMIT SCORES:
- 1 point for that flex of Lance Armstrong in Sports Illustrated not aging particularly well
- 2 points for half the climbers smoking cigarettes at base camp
+ 3 points for immediately going there with a shockingly brutal opening in Monument Valley
- 1 point for snow that’s clearly Idahoan potato flakes, canned for your convenience
+ 5 points for Ben Mendelsohn on a helicopter determined to literally kiss his ass goodbye
It’s loud, it’s dumb, it’s awesome—and I wouldn’t change a frame of it.
📊 [PLAYBACK: PERFORMANCE]
Budget: $75M in 2000 ($132M today). Worldwide Gross: $216M then, $380M now. *Adujsted as of 2025
Cinema DEFCON Threat Assessment: 165 Days — Theatrical-to-DVD Window
Verdict Defied gravity at the box office, even if logic, taste, and critical opinion were left clinging to a cliff wall. Didn’t quite make it to a six-month home video window, but drove so many people to experience it on the big screen, I’ll give it to ‘em anyway. DEFCON 5.
🎬 [PLAYBACK: TRAILER]
The original theatrical trailer dials in every corny graphics preset, overly dramatic voiceover cliché, and stock music library formula to summon peak turn-of-the-millenium Velveeta.
Postscript:
While Vertical Limit plays its K2 setting for high-stakes spectacle, owing to its earned reputation as the most dangerous climb in the world, real-life events sadly mirrored its tragedy not long after.
On Aug 1, 2008, eleven climbers lost their lives on the same part of the mountain—many by eerily similar means. Though K2 had long claimed lives, that single deadliest event in the mountain’s history lends the film’s final act an unexpected emotional weight that’s harder to shake in its aftermath.
