Vertical Limit

What about K2 and the splendour of the Himalayas? Well, the film was shot in New Zealand, not that you would notice. Mt Cook is a magnificent stand in.

The plot is a stuck-in-a-sub drama, except it's up a mountain. The same principles apply. Is a rescue bid too dangerous and too late? Will the buried victims - relatively comfortable within their cave-like crevasse - die of altitude sickness before help arrives? Do you care?

Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell), a National Geographic photographer, wants to save his sister (Robin Tunney), trapped under the snow, close to the summit of K2, with injured mountaineer Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea) and the fiercely competitive self-made millionaire boss of the expedition, Elliot Vaughn (Tom Paxton). He takes with him an odd collection of misfits, including a couple of Aussie jokers, a French Canadian glamour puss (Izabella Scorupco) and an old man of the mountains (Scott Glenn), who fulfills Robert Shaw's role in Jaws, except his nemesis is Vaughn, not a mechanical shark.

The stunts, assisted by technical advances in computer fakery, are too outrageous to believe and, therefore, lose their thrill value. Appalling as it may sound, Cliffhanger is more exciting and more fun.