Vertical Limit (1.0 Money Train)

I know that in movies the viewer is expected to accept what goes on. And that's fine. So when Peter Parker gets spider powers, I say Fine, I can accept that. (I'd have preferred a radioactive spider from a good-science point of view, but I'll accept none the less). Or when Sean Connery gets the girl in his later films (eg, Entrapment, but CZJ did marry Michael Douglas, so go figure), I can accept that, too. Or when the bus in Speed gets air off a flat bit of road to leap a huge gap, I figure that's okay, too. And in Vertical Limit I support the film makers for all the exciting stuff with hanging off cliffs by an ice-axe, and even an avalanche coming off hardpacked, not steep snow. But then they go too far.

The nitroglycerin is big problem number 1 in this film. I don't mind that they take it in the first place, or that they bang it around with abandon all the way up the mountain. It's sealed in a damped vacuum flask, obviously. Fine. But it suddenly reacts with sunlight, from INSIDE the flask! And the Pakistanis had never noticed before. Well, maybe they're dim. But that doesn't change the fact that it's reacting from INSIDE a VACUUM flask! And only AFTER they're told it reacts. They'd been walking for hours with the flasks in the sun with no effect. Stupid, stupid science.

Of course, no-one needs to bother with nitro in the first place because no real climber would risk all to save someone in that situation. It's not that they'd be callous, it's that the maths doesn't add up. They have 30-odd hours (40?) to get to the girl and save her. Her lungs are full of fluid, she can barely move, she's been above 24,000ft for ages without oxygen. As Wicks says, she's screwed. But they get there in the nick of time, just minutes before she's due to succumb. Great! Climatic ending! Hoorah! It's like disarming the bomb with just 1 second to go. The difference of course, is that, unlike a bomb, they still have to get her back down the hill. A hill that almost killed them coming up, and along a route that involved a massive leap across an even more massive void. (Remember that, when Peter took a running leap off a cliff, despite not being altitude fit, at an alitude where every step is an effort, floated through the air, and buried his ice axes into solid rock?) At least in the film "K2" when they rescued someone, a helicopter showed up suddently to get them down quickly.

On the upside, it has Ben Mendleson and TWO other aussies who play aussies. Still, 1 Money Train for the completely disregard of science and mountain realities.