Blu-Ray Review: ‘The Ledge’ Falls Flat Despite All-Star Cast

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CHICAGO – If Fox Faith’s target audience was comprised of atheists, the studio might have churned out this deeply shallow thriller about religious fundamentalism. Though hate-spewing cult leaders like Fred Phelps deserve to be reviled, the vast majority of fictional films about extremism come off as profoundly simple-minded. Like Kevin Smith’s “Red State,” this picture sidesteps its provocative subject matter in favor of routine clichés.

Writer/director Matthew Chapman clearly regards the picture as somewhat of a passion project, since it was spawned by his experience of covering the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a reporter in New York. The unforgettable image of bodies plummeting from the Twin Towers seems to have served as the script’s primary inspiration. As the film opens, a scruffy “non-believer” (Charlie Hunnam) nears the ledge of a rooftop while glaring ominously at the building across the street.

HollywoodChicago.com Blu-Ray Rating: 2.0/5.0
Blu-Ray Rating: 2.0/5.0

It becomes quickly apparent that the man is not perched on the precipice of death purely out of choice. He tells an officer (Terrence Howard) that he must make the fatal jump at noon or someone very dear to him will be killed. Yet instead of informing the cop of his loved one’s whereabouts, he wastes time by gradually revealing the events that led him there. This contrived structure enables the film to run longer than three minutes, as Chapman cuts back in time to the fateful meeting between Hunnam and his neighbors, an evangelical tyrant (Patrick Wilson) and his hopelessly dependent wife (Liv Tyler). There are moments when Chapman’s script flirts with going in intriguing directions, as Hunnam engages in heated philosophical debates with Wilson. Yet it’s clear right off the bat that Wilson is nuttier than a fruitcake, and his steely grin betrays any semblance of suspense. He’s just a crudely constructed cardboard villain whose “arguments” evaporate in the face of Hunnam’s embittered pragmatism. While these scenes could’ve led the film into incendiary territory, they exist solely to push Wilson off the edge, while Hunnam initiates a profoundly ill-advised affair with the sheltered Tyler.

Liv Tyler and Charlie Hunnam star in Matthew Chapman’s The Ledge.
Liv Tyler and Charlie Hunnam star in Matthew Chapman’s The Ledge.
Photo credit: IFC Films

Though Hunnam has turned in solid work on “Sons of Anarchy,” his performance here is distressingly flat, never more so than when he’s on the ledge. In contrast, Howard is riveting, despite the fact that his role is entirely unrelated to the picture, both dramatically and thematically. His character finds out in the first scene that he’s always been infertile, thus proving that his children are not his, and that his wife is a liar. Howard instantly thinks she had an affair, though he never once considers that she may have undergone artificial insemination. Once Hunnam starts lecturing Howard about his problems, the film goes completely off the rails. Wilson is a fine actor, but he’s merely required to ominously chant lines like, “I’m washed, sanctified and justified,” while Tyler mopes about in yet another role so fragile and vulnerable that you want to hug and slap her simultaneously.

The Ledge was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on Sept. 27, 2011.
The Ledge was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on Sept. 27, 2011.
Photo credit: IFC Films

“The Ledge” is presented in all-too-crystalline 1080p High Definition (with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio) that draws unwanted attention to slick CGI effects, such as the digital smoke that appears during the blatantly symbolic opening titles. Though it’s nice to see a gallery of uncut interviews as opposed to a glib assemblage of soundbites, this disc features the most inept series of talking heads in recent memory. The interviewer’s rambling, simplistic questions are badly recorded while the camera remains fixed on the pained expression of actors forced to improvise interesting answers.
 
Howard is conspicuously absent from the selected interviewees, thus leaving us to guess why he bothered to serve as co-executive producer for this mess. Instead we have Hunnam perched on the film’s pivotal rooftop where his voice is occasionally drowned out by the sounds of nearby construction workers. The actor makes a spot-on observation that the film industry is in “a terrible state creatively,” though he doesn’t seem to see how this film is just as derivative as any other formulaic mainstream thriller. In a more intelligible sit-down, Wilson reveals that he’s Episcopalian, and says that he researched the Old Testament in preparation to play this character, since his life philosophy is stitched together out of select verses. While Wilson confesses that it excites him to play characters whose worldview is black and white, this film demonstrates that the act of watching these characters can be duller than dishwater. In perhaps the disc’s most awkward interview, Chapman stops mid-answer and asks the interviewer to repeat a question. The camera then rests for what feels like an eternity on his face before he starts delivering the exact same answer. These interviews are so squirm-inducing that they end up functioning as proof of why press junkets occasionally make celebrities want to jump off a ledge. 

‘The Ledge’ is released by IFC Films and stars Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard and Christopher Gorham. It was written and directed by Matthew Chapman. It was released on Sept. 27, 2011. It is rated R.

HollywoodChicago.com staff writer Matt Fagerholm

By MATT FAGERHOLM
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
matt@hollywoodchicago.com

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