'Vertical Limit' has viewers on the edge

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The cliffhanger is back. "Vertical Limit" may be a bit oxygen-deprived when it comes to character development, but it compensates with nail-biting, stomach-churning feats of death defiance on the slopes of the world's second-highest mountain.

Though there's a stretch or two of near inertia where the movie lumbers along like a stubborn pack mule, "Vertical Limit" delivers enough gripping action to make up for the slow spots.

Chris O'Donnell stars as Peter Garrett, a mountain climber who must make a terrible choice in the movie's opening scene to save himself and his sister, Annie (Robin Tunney), while scaling a rock-face with their father.

In the span of a few minutes, director Martin Campbell ("GoldenEye," "The Mask of Zorro") captures a really horrifying moment. Unfortunately, "Vertical Limit" then grounds itself for prolonged meanderings and musings as the action jumps ahead a few years and shifts to the snows of Pakistan, where Peter will have to mount a daring rescue.

After the incident with his father, Peter has shunned mountain climbing, instead studying wildlife for National Geographic. Peter conveniently is on a project within spitting distance of Annie, who is about to scale K2 with a team that includes wealthy adventurer Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton).

The movie takes an overly long breather to introduce its large cast of climbers. Foremost is Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn), a wild-haired abominable snowman who spends his time alone on K2 looking for his dead wife, lost in an expedition years earlier.

There's the French-Canadian beauty Monique (Izabella Scorupco); Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea), the levelheaded leader of Vaughn's climb; two wacky Australian brothers (Steve Le Marquand and Ben Mendelsohn); and Kareem (Alexander Siddig), the big-hearted Muslim porter.

Peter organizes the rescue after foul weather traps Annie, Tom and Vaughn high up in nosebleed altitudes.

The pulse quickens once "Vertical Limit" hits the hills again. To extricate the victims from a crevice, the rescuers cart along nitroglycerin, which they soon discover is not the ideal liquid to haul into avalanche country.

Split into three two-person teams, they dangle dizzyingly off cliffs, make a scarifying jump from a helicopter and get up-close and personal with monster snowslides.

There's tension in the ranks as Peter discovers a dark connection between Wick and Vaughn that calls into question the grizzled climber's motive for joining the rescue. And the self-preservation-minded Vaughn becomes positively Machiavellian about whether supplies should be "wasted" on the injured Tom.

Despite these little touches, the characters are mainly one-dimensional types whose yammer occupies time from one puppet-on-a-string stunt to the next. And the symmetry between the movie's climax and its harrowing opening scene is a bit much for credulity.

"Vertical Limit" is a case where less explication would be more. By excising some of that mountainside chit-chat, Campbell could have created a tauter movie that keeps the focus where it belongs - namely, on its very effective cliffhangers.

When the characters just shut up and dangle, "Vertical Limit" becomes one heck of a wild time.