User Reviews

Since I'm an atheist who happens to be very interested in discussions involving religions, "The Ledge" really seemed attractive. Gavin is about the jump out of a building, in order to save a girl that he finally discovers he loves. The police officer that tries to impede him from doing that is a man who has family issues, mainly because he finds out that his kids aren't from his gene, if you know what I mean. The movie tells the story of them about, making you understand why they're there, what happened in their lives and what is about to happen. The story is very original, but sometimes feels over-the-top; I mean, I sincerely don't believe that Gavin would kill himself for that reason. Also, he looks to calm for someone who is about to commit suicide. Psychiatrist may understand what I mean. On the other hand, photography direction is BEAUTIFUL, delivering a nostalgic atmosphere. If the story wasn't so unrealistic and unlikely, this would've been a much better film. However, it's just a regular one, interesting in some aspects.

I enjoyed most of this movie. It would get a 9, if not for the last 10 minutes in the movie. I can not agree with the decision that the anti-hero makes. If you can suspend your belief enough to look past it, there are lots of thought-provoking scenes and imagery in the movie. I do not know if it's the atheists "Brokeback Mountain", because I have no intention of watching Brokeback Mountain. Ever. I know that the non-conformist viewpoints were a breath of fresh air and it was invigorating to hear arguments that I have made repeated on screen. My girlfriend is heavily religious, so we had some good discussions at the end of this movie. But I still have a huge problem with the way the movie ends, so I will probably not watch it again.

I've just seen this film tonight at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the first film on my Sundance list because I had a chance to meet Chris Gorham at another screening a few months ago, and he's been talking about it.

I was concerned, however, as I started seeing very mixed reviews. As I walked in I was prepared to be bored, preached at, and left with a very predictable life-affirming message. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Let's start with the talent. Gavin, Charlie Hunnam looking like a cross between a young Ryan O'Neal and the late Heath Ledger (complete with fake American accent), eats up most of the screen time, and he's neither hero (a man who falls in love) nor villain (a man who destroys a marriage). That's a sign of a complex character, because real life is seldom black or white. You like him enough, though, not to want him to die. Terrence Howard is predictably good though his character is a little flat compared to the others, Liv Tyler -- who I've never been a fan of before -- turned in a fantastic multi-dimensional performance. Christopher Gorham, as Gavin's roommate, makes a fine showing as well, despite there being very little of it. (Any more of Chris's story would have seemed a forced, unnecessary subplot.) The standout performance, I thought, came from Patrick Wilson as Tyler's Christian fundamentalist husband. For the first half hour I was distracted by the fact that he's a Will Arnett doppelganger, but by the end of the movie he's become frighteningly snakelike.

You expect the Christian extremist to be the bad guy, the evil one. But that's not what happens. Of course he's the bad guy, and yes, he's got views that many people won't agree with, but, through the good writing and his performance, I admired his passion, and even though I didn't agree with his rigid views, I felt his incredible pain as he discovers his wife's infidelity. Some of the folks I was with considered his character over the top, and it is definitely extreme complete with profuse sweating, but you don't really know what direction he's going to turn next, and that's an interesting villain. By the end of the movie my sympathy for him was gone, but I like the fact that he had enough layers that I could feel his pain and hate him at the same time.

The movie certainly made me think, there's a lot of religious and philosophical discussion, but more impact was made by all the pure emotion going on. In case you might think it too cerebral, there was plenty of tension along the way. Like every other scene in the movie, as Gavin stands on the ledge you have no idea which way it might go. In the end, Gavin makes a choice, one life over another, that he faced years before, and this time he makes the "right" choice, at least in his heart. It is not a story about an atheist versus a Christian, anymore than it is really a story about a guy standing on a ledge. And let's not leave out some of the lovely scenes between Tyler & Hunnam as their relationship grows. The film, told mostly in flashback, is quite the emotional roller coaster until it rolls clean off the tracks.

I'm looking forward to seeing it play on IFC so I can appreciate the nuances a little more without being too concerned about the outcome. Matthew Chapman definitely has a lot to say (as he did at the post-film Q&A), and I'm eager to see his next move.

"The Ledge" is a good example of what happens when a story is made to fit the Procrustean bed of a preconceived philosophical dilemma. Actually, make that a preconceived sophomoric philosophical dilemma. The result is that characters in this movie find themselves in situations that would never really happen, and even if they did, they do things that no one would ever do, and even if someone was dumb enough to do these things, we wouldn't care, because no one cares what happens to people that stupid.

The movie has two plots, and the principal characters of each intersect on the ledge of a skyscraper, where one man, Gavin, is about to jump, and another man, Hollis, is a detective trying to talk him out of it. The movie begins with the Hollis-plot. Hollis goes to a fertility clinic to donate some sperm, whereupon he finds out that he is sterile owing to a genetic defect, and has been so all his life. This means that the two children his wife had were not his. As we find out through subsequent scenes interspersed with the Gavin-plot, Hollis and his wife were wondering why they could not have children. So, they went to a fertility clinic to be tested. His wife Angela went by herself to get the results, at which point she found out that Hollis was sterile.

Get ready for some unbelievable stupidity. First, Angela did not tell Hollis, because she was afraid she would lose him. In other words, we are to believe that she thought that once he found out that he was sterile, he would no longer love her. All I can say is that any man who would stop loving his wife because he found out that he was sterile is a husband worth being rid of. But the whole thing is preposterous. Couples go to fertility clinics all the time, and when one of them turns out to be infertile, they have all sorts of choices available to them, such as adoption, surrogate mothers, or in vitro fertilization, but divorce is not usually one of them.

Second, if you can get past that, here is another stupidity. Angela decided to have children anyway, and to make sure they looked like Hollis, she decided that Hollis's brother should be the father. So, she had Hollis's brother go to the fertility clinic to be tested to see if he has the same genetic defect, right? And when it turned out that he was fertile, she had him donate sperm so that she could be artificially inseminated, right? Wrong! She had an adulterous affair with Hollis's brother until she got pregnant. And that worked out so well that when she was ready to have a second child, she started having sex with him again.

All right, let's move on to the Gavin-plot. Gavin hires Shana at the hotel he manages. She and her husband Joe just happen to live on the same floor of a nearby apartment. Joe is a Christian fundamentalist to an absurd degree, whereas Gavin is an atheist. Joe finds out that Gavin and Shana are having an affair. He calls Gavin on the phone and tells him that either Gavin or Shana must die for having committed adultery. If Gavin does not jump off the ledge of the skyscraper by noon, Joe will shoot Shana. Joe says he has the courage to die for his beliefs. This test will determine whether Gavin has the courage to die for his beliefs. Actually, if he jumps, Gavin will not be dying for his beliefs, but to save the life of the woman he loves. But by this point, the whole idea is so dumb that we don't really care. Anyway, at noon Gavin leaps to his death, and that is so dumb we don't really care either. After all, any normal person would have simply called the police and told them what the situation was.

There is a subplot about Gavin's roommate Chris. Gavin took pity on Chris and let him move in with him when he lost his job on account of being HIV positive. Chris has a lover whom he wishes to marry, but the rabbi won't perform the ceremony. Therefore, religion, be it Christianity or Judaism, is shown to be bad. Atheism, on the other hand, is shown to be good. There is a ludicrous scene where a maid in the hotel finds out her father died and becomes hysterical, and Gavin gets down on his knees and pretends to pray to God to save her father. That is so we will think him magnanimous. And when Gavin leaps to his death to save the woman he loves, knowing there is no afterlife, that is supposed to prove just how noble he is.

To an atheist like me, you might think that "The Ledge" would be refreshing, considering all the movies that have portrayed atheists in a bad light. But the movie was too lopsided and simplistic to be of any value, either intellectually or aesthetically.

After it is all over, Hollis goes home, intent on reconciling with his wife and accepting her children as his. Angela wants to say grace, but Hollis says, "No, not tonight." The idea is that he's had all the religion he can stand for one day. However, they will presumably say grace in the future. As to whether they will be having Hollis's brother over for dinner any time soon, I cannot say.

My, this movie has a lot of things spinning. It's like watching CNN for an hour with every conceivable topic trying to be covered. Here are some of them (I am sure I missed a few): religious conversion as in "born again" and no religion, infertility, adultery, gay, and trauma (all three main characters had some form of it). Conversations ensue on all these so it is a chatty film.

But the plot moves along with good twists and turns with a conclusive ending. I did find the character played by Liv Tyler to be overly subdued and monotone – and she rather slowed the film down too much. Or this film lacked energy bursts sometimes. For characters with a dysfunctional past they didn't seem particularly animated. I refer in particular to Liv Tyler who was selling herself for drugs and found the Lord through her husband. Or said another way, I would have expected a woman who opens a beer bottle with her teeth to be a little more spunky! Her husband (Patrick Wilson), it would seem, was a one-time pornographer and dealer who also found the Lord's calling – his anger is suppressed through his Biblical utterances.

The film does require some patience – it became too academic in the middle as well as artificial. I did enjoy the performance of Charlie Hunnan and Terrence Howard. In the end I suppose what we have left is love and acceptance.

Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) is a faithless jumper on a ledge. Terrence Howard plays Hollis, a police officer whose job it is to talk him down. The story as to how he got to the ledge is a flashback and the main part of the movie. This is interrupted by scenes of Hollis confronting his wife, which we don't know if these are flashbacks or if this is something he is thinking about doing.

Gavin is a hotel manager. His roommate is a gay Jew and HIV positive. Liv Tyler plays his mousey neighbor married to an unlikable Christian who wants to convert gays and atheists. Liv gets a job working for Gavin, who wants to liberate her from Mr. Joe Christian. I grew weary of the stereotyping of both Christians and atheists before this thing was half over... Catholics burn in hell and atheists are atheists because of some event in their life to make them hate God. Later the movie deviates from the stereotypes. Christians are not always good and atheists are not always bad. They are both human. Ho-hum.

Joe Christian treats his wife like dirt. Liv Tyler tells a far fetched story on how she met Joe, who as it turns out is a bit psychotic. The movie starts out slow and draws you in to where you have to see what happens. It doesn't make any definitive statement about God or atheism.

F-bomb, sex talk, sex, nudity (Liv Tyler)

A-Z Horror Movie of the Day..."The Ledge" (R - 2011 - US)

Sub-Genre: Thriller/Psycho

My Score: 7.1

Cast=9 Acting=8 Plot=6 Ending=7 Story=8 Scare=6 Jump=2 F/X=7 Thrill=9 Psycho=9

A police officer looks to talk down a young man lured by his lover's husband to the ledge of a high rise, where he has one hour to contemplate a fateful decision.

"Love the Sinner, hate the sin?" What starts as a love affair gone wrong turns out to be a philosophical debate about faith and the afterlife. It is not so much a horror movie, but a rare gem as a psychological thriller. You may not jump for joy and pound your fist, but sit in quiet reflection or debate this with your movie watching partner when it's over. If you are looking for an old fashioned, edge-of-your-seat thriller...this IFC release is worth a watch for sure!!

Dull, boring, transparent, cliché, poorly written, poorly directed, horrible cinematography, etc..etc..etc..

This is just a BAD movie. The reviewers here claiming this makes them thinks makes begs the question.. Are they capable of thought at all?!

Basically -

Man and wife move into the same building as our main character. Main character wants to sleep with the wife. Wife sleeps with him. Husband finds out and gives him a choice. He jumps off the ledge at noon or the wife dies. There. I just saved you almost two hours.

How can anyone have empathy on these two?

HORRIBLE. AVOID. RUN. RUN AWAY. RUN FAST.

This is a strange tale and it's quite interesting at first. Patrick Wilson plays a religious fanatic very well and he shows he is a versatile actor. Liv Tyler actually performs better than her usual which can be bland. Terence Howard plays a suicide counselor with his own problems and it's quite funny when it comes out while he is trying to talk Charlie Hunnam off the ledge of a building.

There are some involving moments about religion and it's being rejected or embraced by 3 damaged people. It would have been better if the ending had been a happy and clever one instead. Maybe I missed the point of the movie.

The first problem is that the film tried to be thought provoking, but it didn't succeed in this, seeing as the whole Christianity vs atheism argument used in this movie was pretty uninventive and uneducated - basically, "I'm a raging atheist because some religious people are bad guys and blow up things". Go figure. Found it also pretty strange why the lead got that carried away in all those arguments about religion, I mean none of the discussions with the husband were even closely heated which brings me to another point - acting.

Some people were saying that Liv Tyler seemed rather distant and apathetic in this movie. I don't necessarily object, but her characters have that feel in more movies than one which isn't necessarily a bad thing and it works for some actresses. The main problem was the lead - Charlie Hunnam who - judging on this movie alone, just can't act - considering what he had been through and that he was about to commit suicide, he seemed to be doing pretty OK at the rooftop, telling his story like he was having a beer with a friend. Convincing? If you want a true portrait of someone in a tight situation and able to convey that emotion as well, try Gosling as Henry Letham in Stay. When it comes to drama genre, you somehow need to be able to associate with the people in the movie on some sort of a level, but in this case, it was really hard to do so.

All in all, the movie was trying to be artistic and emotional, but it never felt convincing because of the booming mediocrity of each aspect.