In the opening minutes of Asger Leth’s Man on a Ledge, Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) checks into the Roosevelt Hotel, climbs out his window, and stands on the ledge outside. A few pedestrians spot him and soon the TV cameras arrive, but all anyone knows at first is there is a man on a ledge.
It’s more complex than that, but it’s a simple concept for a movie. One that immediately brings to mind other confined thrillers like Phone Booth, Panic Room, or recently, the under-appreciated Buried. The key is to allow the audience to put themselves in the fixed character’s shoes, in this case Nick’s at the edge of a 200-foot drop, while keeping the escalating environment around him anything but static. But Leth and writer Pablo Fenjves miss the mark on both sides of the window, and the film feels as flat and generic as the title.
The view from the highest floor, a steep drop to a bustling Manhattan intersection, is frightening at first, sure to make even the steadiest palms perspire a little. But, aside from a personal fear of heights, these early scenes are sapped of any real danger, since there’s little chance the movie’s hero will tumble haphazardly over the edge during the first act.
Once we learn Nick is out for redemption, you get the feeling he’s going to be standing there a while. A frenetic flashback establishes Nick is an escaped convict, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit (of course), and his high-rise perch is just an elaborate diversion.
Across the crowded street, Nick’s brother (Jamie Bell) and girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) are breaking into a vault to boost the gem Nick was accused of stealing. How a Cassidy suddenly showing up with the diamond, the other escaping prison, and a suicide scare were supposed to prove his innocence is rather fuzzy, part of a half-baked backstory that only grows more ridiculous. Banter between the robbers and Rodriguez’s cleavage distract from what is basically a checklist of heist tropes, complete with a one-of-a-kind safe.
“If you’re lying about any of this, I’ll push you myself,” says the jaded NYPD negotiator, Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), when she’s finally clued in to the conspiracy. Mercer lost a jumper off a bridge on her last assignment, which means she was the perfect pick to cause a stifling media circus and the requisite departmental power struggle to stall for time. 
It also means a familiar disgraced cop story, and a rather bizarre flirtation between the two attractive leads, considering the couple’s precarious circumstances. Banks makes a futile attempt to create something from nothing, but Mercer is a shrill alternative to Worthington’s milquetoast man on a ledge.
The script is this movie’s downfall though, a hackneyed hodgepodge of truly risible dialogue and huge chunks borrowed from The Negotiator. Rather than build the characters to be more compelling or firm up the surrounding logic, Fenjves simply pushes the plot forward, introducing new players and predictable developments. Ed Harris chews scenery as the real estate mogul who framed Nick. Kyra Sedgewick plays a news anchor scrambling to get the scoop. There’s even a homeless onlooker who screams, “Attica! Attica!” referencing a similar police stand-off in the far-superior Dog Day Afternoon.
By the third act, Fenjves has written himself into a literal corner. The anxiety of a ledge and the tension of a heist both plateau, before the preposterous, B-movie resolution fizzles and flops, like letting the air out of a balloon. The story of an unknown jumper presents infinite possibilities about a person pushed to the limit, but the rote and risk-less Man on a Ledge only seems concerned with the ones that have been done before. Might as well jump.
