Vertical Limit
	Rated: PG-13
	Runtime: 2hr 5min
	Starring: Bill Paxton, Chris O'Donnell, Izabella Scorupco, Robin Tunney, Scott Glenn
	MFG Rating: 2/5

After seeing the trailers for Vertical Limit, we feared that it would be an unrealistic, totally predictable, cliché' of a mountain movie. Unfortunately we nailed it dead on. Even the presence of two of our favorite actors, Scott Glenn and Bill Paxton along with the meanest mountain on the planet can't save this one.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, K2 is the ultimate challenge for a mountain climber. At over 28,000 feet, it is just shy of being as tall as Mount Everest, but it is much much tougher to climb. In addition to the sheer rocky face and snow and ice, you have to spend much of the climb in the "dead zone". Your body struggles just to live at that altitude due to lack of oxygen, let alone do a strenuous climb. Even during the very narrow window in summer where the weather is calm enough to attempt to climb K2, you also have subzero temperatures to deal with and blinding snow storms can come up in just a matter of hours stranding climbers with no way to move up or down.

Despite the danger and the costs involved in organizing an excursion to such a remote area of the world, in recent years each season will bring several teams attempting to climb K2. Many try, very few make the summit, and several people inevitably end up badly injured if not dead. K2 has been called the "Savage Mountain", and it is the backdrop for Vertical Limit.

The story here revolves around a brother and sister, Peter and Annie Garrett played by Chris O'Donnell and Robin Tunney. They've been climbing all their lives, and Annie gets a chance to go up K2 led by flamboyent billionaire Elliott Vaughn (Bill Paxton). As you might guess, things go terribly wrong and we end up with Peter on a mission to try to rescue his sister.

There are alot of flaws with this movie. First off, realism is right out the window with people leaping from cliff to cliff and hanging on by the fingernails through avalanches. Worse, the movie does not successfully capture the real danger that is K2. The mountain should be the real antagonist here and a sense that it is being battled should be instilled, but that does not happen. Even the cinematography left us a bit underwhelmed. We would expect some really great scenes with such a magnificient back drop, but there really were no breath taking scenes.

Despite the flaws, the movie does manage a few good moments of intensity. And we do get some decent action sequences even if they do test your ability to suspend disbelief. This pulls the movie up to a solid 2 stars, but this can definitely wait for DVD. What it really makes us want is for the Michael Biehn K2 movie to be released on DVD as it is much more realistic and a better all around movie.

- Billy Bob