‘Wrath of the Titans’, the action-heavy sequel to ‘Clash of the Titans’ (2010), hit theaters March 30, 2012. The trailer boasted more monsters, more fighting, and more special effects and while it delivers on those areas, it fails in every other category that would qualify for a good film.

Spoiler alert!

‘Wrath of the Titans’ begins with a common mistake of most bad films: revealing a major character’s death off screen in the first five minutes. Roughly a decade has passed and the demi-god Io, who fell in love with Perseus (Sam Worthington) in the first film, has died after having a son named Helius (John Bell).

Perseus has retired from the hero business to raise his son as a fisherman. One night, his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) comes to his home to tell him that since mankind has stopped praying to the gods, they have all lost their powers and have begun dying off. In addition, Tartarus, the Underworld, is falling apart and so Zeus and Hades’ evil father Kronos will be able to break free from his prison and wreak havoc on the world.

Zeus wants Perseus to come with him and his half-brother, Ares (Edgar Ramirez), the God of War, to bargain with Hades (Ralph Fiennes) to help keep Kronos imprisoned. Perseus refuses on the grounds that he will not leave his son and so Zeus travels with his brother Poseidon (Danny Huston), God of the Seas, to Tartarus.

When they arrive, they are ambushed by Hades and Ares, who want to release Kronos to rule over the earth in exchange for keeping their immortality. Poseidon manages to escape and tells Perseus to find his son, Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who can lead them to Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) who can help them find their way into Tartarus to save Zeus.

The overcomplicated plot is the first flaw of the movie. In both this film and its predecessor, the audience is told that the gods run on prayer and worship. However, no one thinks to start praying to Zeus in order to increase his powers. Furthermore, the entire conflict is caused by Perseus’ refusal to come with Zeus, Ares, and Poseidon to bargain with Hades.

It made perfect sense for him to go, but he didn’t on the grounds that he didn’t want to leave his son. However, moments later Perseus leaves his son to go fishing and a Chimera attacks their village, almost killing the both of them. Furthermore, Zeus is a god. If Perseus had asked him to place his son somewhere safe while he went on the journey, the conflict could have been avoided.

There are plotholes the size of canyons in this film and they get bigger by the minute. The first film, while not good, at least had the decency to explain everything to avoid confusion. ‘Wrath’ does no such thing and it prevents any enjoyment of the movie.

The second biggest flaw of the movie is the lack of character establishment. There is little to no attempt to humanize, develop, or explore these characters. They are basically paper cutouts running around in a well-rendered environment with nothing interesting to say or do.

The worst offender is Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), whose entire presence is useless. First of all, she bears the same name of the princess from the first film whom Perseus rescued from the Kraken, but in the sequel she is blonde and played by a different actress. This is never referenced or explained in the film.

Is it the same character? Is the first princess considered non-canonical? Second of all, she goes on the journey to Tartarus with Perseus and Agenor, thus abandoning her post as Queen of the Grecian armies, and does absolutely nothing but get rescued by Perseus. Any feminists in the audience will immediately be angered by the lack of strong female characters in the film.

At least in the first film, Io was helpful and Medusa not only managed to be a legitimate threat, but she kills nearly all of the heroes on their quest. Andromeda’s character is pathetic and bears no relevance to the plot at all other than to add an x-chromosome to the cast and to moon over Perseus in a half-hearted attempt at a romance.

The third biggest flaw is the script. The characters have the absolute worst dialogue I’ve seen in a film this year so far. Most of the dialogue is either anachronistic, pointing out obvious things, or poor attempts at sarcasm.

The only person with amusing dialogue is the talented Mr. Bill Nighy, whose slightly insane character and hammy acting at least puts a smile on your face for the twenty minutes he appears in the film. Liam Neeson is at the very least trying to emote, but he has little to work with other than Ralph Fiennes.

However, the worst actor by far is Edgar Ramirez as Ares, the God of War. He looks like a homeless man who stumbled onto the set and was given the script.

Throughout the history of movies, video games, and literature, Ares is supposed to be an intimidating force of power but in this film, he is nothing more than a whiny adult child who is jealous of Perseus and spends every waking moment complaining about how he is the least favorite son. This is made worse by the fact that we are never shown these relationships, so there is no emotional weight between Zeus, Ares, and Perseus.

The only thing of merit in this mess of a film is the special effects, which are well done and create great environments for fight scenes. Everything else about ‘Wrath’ will inspire you to take out your own anger on the filmmakers for making such a poor recreation of Greek mythology. Save your money and sit this one out unless you want to really understand what wrath is all about.

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‘Man on a Ledge’ begins with an unidentified man in a business suit, coming out of New York City’s subway and getting a room at an upscale hotel in midtown and ordering an ostentatious meal, complete with champagne and lobster. He then writes a note and steps out onto the ledge of his hotel room. To the audience this appears to be a desperate man, perhaps answering a desolate economy with the only solution he knows: ending it.

“There’s something gripping about the idea of a man on a ledge,” says the movie’s producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. “Is he going to jump? Is he not gonna jump? And you know we talked to a lot of veteran cops and people who have been in this situation. And they say in general the people down below about are 50/50 for them to jump or not jump, which is kind of sick and yet I guess it is human nature.

I think it’s what attracted us to the script is that impending catastrophe and in this case we wanted to have this very strong interactivity between the ledge and what’s going on there.”

Executive Producer David Ready adds, “it really had a romantic quality to it. A redemption story of a guy who’s putting it all on the line in one day to get his life back. And so it just sort of hit all the buttons, for me and for the group.” Cut to a prison scene where we again meet our “jumper,” Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) once a New York City police officer now a convict, sentenced to 25 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

Cassidy admits to being suicidal to the prison’s shrink and unable to handle his time for the crime for which he was found guilty of. While doing a moonlighting gig, escorting the rare and expensive Monarch Diamond, it is stolen and businessman David Englander (Ed Harris) frames Cassidy for its disappearance, putting him behind bars for 25 years and allowing Englander to collect the insurance on the diamond.

Englander’s motto, di Bonaventura says, is “if somebody takes something from you, you take more back, ‘because that’s America.’” Cassidy is furloughed to attend his father’s funeral where an elaborate escape plan and heart pounding chase scene ensue, bringing us back to the ledge. “Cassidy,” di Bonaventura explains, “has an agenda, which is to prove that he was framed, and as an audience member, you still believe that maybe he is suicidal.”

Explains Ready, “it’s a prison escape that turns into a heist movie that sort of results in a love story.” Worthington agrees, “it’s got something that is different to other action movies…I get to stay still and act for a bit, not just go around yelling.”

The love story comes into play through the relationship between Cassidy and NYPD negotiator, Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) whom Cassidy asks for by name. Mercer is a controversial figure within the police force, having recently lost a jumper who was one of their own. “Cassidy chooses Mercer,” explains di Bonaventura, “because he feels that she’ll understand what has happened to him. He was ostracized for something he didn’t do, as she was for something she had no control over.”

Man On A Ledge was a spec script written by Pablo F. Fenjves that Lorenzo di Bonaventura hoped to option while he was the president of Warner Bros. He later acquired it under the di Bonaventura Pictures umbrella. As Mark Vahradian further explains, “the script got stuck along the way at MGM Studios, where they asked to take it out.

It then went to Paramount and was set up at Paramount Vantage. Three months later Paramount Vantage went out of business and so the script was dead again.” di Bonaventura and Vahradian didn’t give up on it, though. They had just finished Red with Summit Entertainment, so they sent the studio the script. “They fell in love with it,” says Vahradian. Suddenly there was interest from Sam Worthington, and Summit bought it that same week. “From there it went very, very fast,” explains Vahradian.

Director Asger Leth, whose background is in documentaries, was brought on to steer Man on a Ledge as his first feature film. It’s a decision the producers were especially excited about because the qualities he’d used to tell real-life stories were what they were after. Explains Vahradian, “what Asger brought was that awareness of details that you have to have as a documentary filmmaker. You have to be able to pick out what’s interesting in this grand gigantic frame of reality and move there.”

di Bonaventura describes Leth as gutsy, an attribute one would probably want from a director who was going to film a 14-inch ledge, 225 feet above midtown Manhattan. Leth’s fearlessness was made initially apparent at his first meeting with di Bonaventura. As Leth recalls, “I went to meet with him about another script, but on the way there I was thinking, ‘he’s also got that other script that I really like, that I’ve been talking to my agent about for a while.’

So I went there and said, ‘Lorenzo I know we’re having a meeting about this script, but that other script, Man On A Ledge, I read that. I really like that.’” di Bonaventura was impressed by Leth’s willingness to tackle a big entertainment movie as his first film. “He’s not risk averse,” says the producer. “And that’s a great thing, to find somebody like that.

So much is unfamiliar that you want somebody who’s gutsy. Also, stylistically, doing documentaries is really interesting, so we were hoping to bring that style and gutsiness to our movie.” Within a week of that first powwow, Leth and di Bonaventura were meeting with Summit and Sam Worthington. “Worthington had a really short calendar,” Leth explains, and it was decided if they were going to do this, they had to get started immediately.

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When former NYPD officer-turned-prison escapee Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) enters the famed Roosevelt Hotel on 45th & Madison in New York City, heads to one of the highest floor and steps out onto the ledge, he threatens more than just his own well-being. A whole city is about to seize up, including some very nervous people with some very big secrets.

Ex-cop Cassidy ‘s heart-stopping decision to stand on the ledge of a high-rise building creates not only a media firestorm, but a delicate situation for hard-living New York Police Department negotiator Lydia Spencer (Elizabeth Banks), who tries to talk him down while dealing with a departmental rival (Edward Burns) who believes she has a conflict of interest. But the longer Lydia spends trying to get to the root of Cassidy’s predicament, the more she realizes he could have an ulterior objective.

Might it have something to do with the mysterious project his brother and ardent supporter (Jamie Bell) is working on with his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) while Cassidy bides his time on the ledge? Or with the behind-closed-doors dealings of a powerful businessman (Ed Harris)?

As more pieces of the puzzle are revealed over the course of Cassidy’s bold stunt, suddenly the story of one disgraced cop trying to prove his innocence becomes something decidedly more eye-opening. Eventually the stakes become more dangerous than the prospect of one man on one ledge simply losing his balance.

In the propulsive, twisty action thriller Man On A Ledge, director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil) takes a naturally heart-pounding scenario and delivers a twisty, nail-biting thriller about the risk a desperate man with few options is willing to take to clear his name. How far would you step out if your life was on the line?

Casting into place

“The cast of this movie is a total dream,” says executive producer David Ready. “I mean both in terms of who they are as actors and who they are as people. We’re really lucky.” Elizabeth Banks proved an excellent, albeit unexpected choice to portray her character, world-weary NYPD negotiator Lydia Mercer. “Elizabeth was an interesting choice for us,” explains Mark Vahradian, producer.

“I liked the fact that she has sort of a raspy, almost thoroughbred blue bloody quality, and Sam is more blue collar. At the same time we thought her comedic ability, which is what she’s known for, would be something that would bring levity to that conversation.” Banks describes Lydia this way: “She can’t get her own life together let alone save someone else’s life.

So, I think the great thing about this film is that it’s a double redemption story. Our lead guy played by Sam Worthington, Nick Cassidy, really needs to redeem himself in this movie. And the great thing is he gives Lydia an opportunity to redeem herself as well.”

As for Jamie Bell, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura found working with the “Billy Elliot” star a joy. “Jamie’s fun,” he says. “Jamie’s one of the rising stars. He’s just a marvelous, skilled, quick to assimilate actor. We found that he and Sam have a great brother-to-brother chemistry and there’s naturalness to how they relate to one another.

And he can be very quirky and so we let him go those quirks, and let him have that kind of fun.” Adds Vahradian, “Obviously you’re looking at resemblances too and you can buy that he and Sam might be related. We wanted that blue collar quality, just like Sam has. We picture these guys, two Irish guys from Long Island, that kind of American family.

And it’s funny, both having their own accents.” (Bell hails from England and Worthington from Australia). Says Bell, “There’s constant information being delivered that changes the direction of the story, changes the direction of certain characters. Which is fantastic to play and to be part of.”

Kyra Sedgwick’s original role was beefed up when the producers realized the impact she brought to her character of television reporter Suzie Morales, hungry to capitalize on the escalating story of a man on a ledge. Says Vahradian, “She came in, she’s amazing and very professional, and you know, ‘here’s what I think my character is, this is the stuff I love, this is the stuff I have to try and do better on.’ She was a great collaborator and it wasn’t easy to get somebody like her interested in doing a few days on this, but she loved the character.”

Executive producer Ready agrees, “She really pops, even in terms of her look in the movie. Her costume is so beautiful. You see her and you see this, live New York and she’s the voice of it and it’s really fun.” For Sedgwick, being a part of the on-the-street texture to the story was exciting for a native New Yorker. “You’ve got people from all walks of life down there,” says Sedgwick. “To get the flavor of the city, I think that’s important. I really do.”

Edward Burns brought a unique charisma to his role, NYPD detective, Jack Dougherty. “We kept adding scenes and adding scenes,” (for Edward Burns) says Vahradian, “cause everything that came out of his mouth was humorous, funny, wry, tough, was New York authentic, perfect NYPD cop. In so many ways he’s the heart of the movie. He was a great surprise for us.” Most of Burns’s scenes are with Banks’s character Lydia, whom detective

Dougherty isn’t entirely convinced is up for the challenge of the situation. “He doesn’t like the fact that, you know, he’s been replaced by her,” says Burns. “It’s supposed to be his gig and he gets taken off the job and it gets given to her. For the first half he’s sort of giving her a hard time, not being very helpful, and then he comes to realize that he should help her.”

Ed Harris’ involvement as wealthy New York businessman David Englander came as a result of his respect for Sam and the thrill of the tale. “It’s an exciting story that’ll hopefully keep people on the edge of their seat,” says Harris. “I mean if the guy’s on the edge of a building, hopefully people will stay on the edge of their seat.” di Bonaventura calls Harris “one of the legendary actors,” and one perfectly suited for the bigger-than-life aspects to David Englander.

“It’s a fun role for him,” says di Bonaventura. “It’s a really interesting, avaricious character, but one who is funny, and graceful, and very smooth at the same time. So it’s a very interesting contrast.”

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