Vertical Limit (**)

Well, I just saw Vertical Limit last night, and it sucked, so I thought I'd do some complaining, badmovies.org style (yes, there will be spoilers, but it's a crappy movie, so I don't care). All right, lets start with the...

Crappy Stock Characters Roll Call (or possibly Role Call)!

Peter Garret (Chris O'Donnell) Our hero, Peter is a photographer for National Geographic. He is tormented by the memory of a mountain climbing accident that culminated with him cutting his dad's support rope in order to save himself and his sister.

Annie Garret (Robin Tunney) Annie blames Peter for the death of their father, and hasn't spoken with him in a while. She has become a famous mountain climber in her own right, and has come to K2 to help Vaughn with his climb

Pappy Garret (Stuart Wilson): When it comes to mountain climbing, he's the best. Goes splat within the first ten minutes of the film.

Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton): A billionaire entrepreneur, so he is obviously the film's villain. He has come to K2 to publicize his new airline: he will climb to the top of the mountain and wave to his plane as it flies overhead. Climbs mountains as well as he talks, which isn't very good. An example of his favorite witty rejoinder: "F**k you!"

Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn, but he looks kinda like David Carradine): A mountain climbing expert who either served with Dad in the military or worked with him in their early mountain climbing days, I forget and it doesn't really matter anyway. Lost his toes and his wife to K2, and he is still searching for his wife's body, which is buried near the peak of the mountain (he seems content to leave his toes buried, though).

Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea): One of the best mountaineers money can buy, and total wuss. He lets Vaughn bully him into going on a limb he thinks is dangerous by threatening to tell everyone that he is too cautious (a very bad trait for mountain climbers, especially in highly dangerous areas. Never say "Better safe then sorry" around a mountain climber; they will spit on you.) gets sick in the ice caves and dies when Vaughn puts an air bubble in his blood stream

Monique Aubertine (Izabella Scorupco): The love interest for our hero, despite the fact that they only have, like, three scenes together. Works for Skip.

Skip Taylor (Robert Taylor): A hot shot Aussie mountain climber, I was able to amuse myself (if no one else) by calling him Bruce and talking like Crocodile Dundee. This was pretty much his only contribution to the film

The Bench Brothers, Malcolm and Cyril (Ben Mendelsohn and Steve Le Marquand, respectively): The obligatory Odious Comic Relief. They get killed, but not quickly enough.

Kareem Nazir (Alexander Siddig): Joins the rescue mission to find his lost brother.

Major Rasul (Temuera Morrison): Leader of a nearby Pakistani military base, he is as free with the unstable Nitroglycerine as he is with Indian tea. He can turn a shoe into a deadly weapon.

K2: The second highest mountain in the world, the mountain itself becomes a character asâ€¦ Oh, who am I kidding, this movie isn't good enough to make the mountain a character. It is darn pretty, though.

Well, this one was a real stinkburger. It starts with the Garret family climbing a mountain somewhere in the southwestern united states. There a stupid and unconvincing accident that ends with the Garret family all dangling from one rope. Pappy Garret realises that the rope can't hold all three of them and orders Peter to cut him lose. Peter is reluctant, but eventually complies. Boy, nothing gets a movie of to a better start then patricide!
Flash forward a few years: Peter is now working for National Geographic, photographing animals on the mountains near K2. When his partner falls and breaks his leg in half, Peter flies in a medical 'copter down to a camp where hundreds of mountaineers are just dicking around on K2. While he is waiting, Vaughn arrives, with Annie in tow. She is going to help Vaughn get to the top of the mountain, along with some other folks. Anyway, they get trapped, Pete rescues them, Yadda Yadda Yadda, I'm sure you know the drill.
The acting was unimpressive, and fairly hammy on the part of Peter. The idea that the Nitroglycerine explodes on contact with the sun seemed sort of unlikely to me, but I'm not a chemist. More problematic is, how did the Major deduce that it was sunlight that caused the stuff to explode? He just saw the shed containing the stuff explode from outside. How did he know it was sunlight that caused it? I'm getting sleepy and unable to write well, so I'll just finish by saying that I give the movie two slimes, and one of those is simply because of the exploding shoe scene (I love Deadly Shoes. Any movie or TV show containing deadly footwear gets extra points from me).
For more examples of Deadly Shoes, see the first Austin Powers, and episodes of The Tick cartoon show featuring American Maid.

Things I learned from this movie:
The Pakistan Army will give dangerous nitroglycerine to anyone who asks politely.

Most mountain climbers are Australian.

Roping yourself to the other climbers in your team creates as many problems as it solves.

Cautiousness is perceived as a negative trait in mountaineers.

Experienced mountaineers shout a lot when in areas with high risk of avalanche

You do not have to place explosives strategically when digging someone out of an unstable area; You just put all the explosives in a pile in the general area and let 'er rip!

Billionaire entrepreneurs are always wrong

Even though it takes more then twenty hours to get to the top of K2, you can still get back down in under a half hour.