Stating the obvious is sometimes a good thing in a movie title. Case in point: Man on a Ledge is a movie about a man who goes out on a ledge.
The ledge happens to be on the outside facing of the 24th floor of the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. If this were a modern hotel, the movie would be called Man Stuck Inside his Room Because the Window is Sealed. It would not be nearly as interesting and the title would suck. Thank the movie gods for open windows.
The man, in this case, is an ex-cop played by Sam Worthington (from Avatar and Clash of the Titans). Worthington is a gung-ho actor. What he seems to lack in pure skill he makes up for in screen presence. That serves him well here. We almost instantly care about his character's plight and we believe what he tells us when the backstory is slowly revealed.
It also helps that, in real life, Worthington is psychologically crippled by a fear of heights. Most of the Roosevelt action scenes in Man on a Ledge were actually shot on the real outside ledge of the Roosevelt. It looks great and it looks convincing on-screen because Leth -- a former documentary filmmaker -- knew how to exploit the realism that shooting on location gave him. Worthington, of course, was fitted into a harness on a wire that then was erased by the magic of cinema, but real fear is still in his eyes during the close-ups.
The man gets out on the ledge for a reason. Why he is there, what happens to him, and why we should care about him is the meat-and-potatoes of the movie. We get flashback scenes and also cut-aways from the ledge to other nearby locations where we follow subplots populated by Jamie Bell (as his brother), Genesis Rodriguez (as his brother's impossibly sexy, panther-like girlfriend), Anthony Mackie (as Worthington's ex-partner on the police force), Ed Harris (as the rich snob who also serves as the villain) and Kyra Sedgwick (as the idiot TV reporter).
Closer to the ledge, Elizabeth Banks is the police negotiator assigned the task of talking Worthington off the ledge. The police and the New York public below assume this is a suicide attempt. Banks, working with the excellent character actor Edward Burns, assumes Worthington can be saved. The public urges him to jump. They like the drama (Leth actually shot real New Yorkers, not just hired extras, and some shouted out the most absurd things).
The overall plot, which involves corruption and intrigue and some fabulous jewel as the object of everyone's interest, is just an excuse for the heightened human emotions of the situation. Jewels are never that important in movies like this. People are. The people of Man on a Ledge are interesting enough to get involved, get caught up, get invested. The ensemble cast has enough bravado and energy to keep us going to the climactic end. So, when the man gets off the ledge, we care.
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