Golden-haired charmer Gavin Nichols (Charlie Hunnam), resembling a Greek god, cautiously steps onto a twenty-story ledge, witnesses cowering and shrieking in a crowd below. He is gripping the building, terrified but determined. At the stroke of noon, Gavin insists that he must jump in order to save a life. In steps police negotiator Hollis (Terrence Howard) peeking his head through a nearby window. Luck should have it, he too is having the worst day of his life, after a visit to the doctor has revealed him to be infertile, making him wonder whose children he and his wife are raising. Two men bound by extraordinary circumstance--the jumper an atheist, the officer a devout Catholic--pushed into a corner, their convictions tested. So reads the hypothetical logline on what I presume must have been sent to the aforementioned actors. The brief synopsis sounds like a suicidal, epistemological My Dinner with Andre -- but, you know, on a ledge.
Unfortunately, The Ledge unfolds over a rather laborious one hundred-minutes. Gavin is the most lifeless of atheist protagonists, and the litany of flashbacks director Matthew Chapman employs to delve into our hero's backstory reveals a bunch of recycled cliches, among them a love triangle with an ex-junkie and now "saved" coed (Liv Tyler) and a stock psychotic religious zealot (Patrick Wilson).
This movie is presposterous -- complete with eye-rolling dialogue, secular vs. biblical miscommunication, sexually-frustrated fanaticism, and finally, a reversion to Bible-quoting violence (Ezekiel 25:17? Come on pal, we've all seen Pulp Fiction). But the film's chief crime is its self-seriousness. Chapman seems to think that framing his film as a polemic will provide an enlightening distillation of an age old philosophical battle. Instead, he winds up with stereotypes mouthing cliches, and does a disservice to his weighty themes.
