“Man On A Ledge”
Rated PG-13
Grade: C

By MICHAEL WALTERS
Cantankerous Critic

“Man On A Ledge” is a movie made to play on TNT on a rainy afternoon. It’s got a simple premise you can understand easily from the title alone, and it never aspires to be anything else. But that begs the question: Why pay for something you probably wouldn’t pay that much attention to on television?

“Avatar” star Sam Worthington is the Man On A Ledge. He’s a former cop framed and convicted for a jewel heist he didn’t commit. So he breaks out of jail and stands on the ledge to attract enough of an audience so he can plead his case and clear his name.

Elizabeth Banks is a hostage negotiator with a checkered track record assigned to talk him down. He’s specifically asked for her because she’s sure to attract the voyeuristic vultures of a bloodthirsty news media eager to pounce on her next screwup.

While Worthington is commanding the stage, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend try to break into the safe of unscrupulous New York real estate mogul Ed Harris. Worthington was accused of stealing a large diamond from Harris. So they try to break into his vault to show the diamond was never stolen in the first place and Harris was just using him to collect the insurance money.

Now I don’t need to explain to you, dear reader, just how profoundly stupid and farfetched this idea is. Somehow while being incarcerated, Worthington has drawn up incredibly detailed and precise plans of Harris’ maximum security vault. And all those security systems can be disarmed by two amateurs.

The movie also relies on Harris and everyone else to play incredibly dumb to keep the mechanics of plot going. There’s also a little loved subplot about dirty cops that’s only brought up when its convenient and then dropped just as quickly.

Worthington, Banks, and Harris never digress to the point of being unwatchable. But there’s no spark, no pizazz, nothing to set the overwhelmingly average movie apart. You wonder why they went to the trouble to make it all?