A loopy drama about an escaped convict (Sam Worthington) who tries to prove his innocence by going out on a window ledge as his accomplices plan a complicated robbery. It makes about as much sense as that, and Worthington doesn't have the charisma to make us care.

Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks and Jamie Bell

Rating: Two stars out of five

A good way to create tension in a movie is to stage it on a narrow window ledge outside the 21st story of a hotel. Put your hero high above the streets -- with the crowd below yelling, "Jump!" (this being New York City) -- and, voila: drama. Not to mention vertigo.

Not to mention Man on a Ledge, whose very title is designed to make you woozy. The only remaining questions -- aside from the question of what hotel these days has windows that open wide enough so that you can crawl out (The Roosevelt, apparently) -- are who you're going to put out there and why.

In this case, it's Sam Worthington, the stolid hunk from Avatar, who has the blocky good looks of a leading man, but none of the charisma that would make you want to hang out with him on the side of a building high above the streets. He plays Nick Cassidy, a former cop who has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for a robbery he says he didn't commit. He has escaped, and now he's checked into the Roosevelt, had a luxurious last meal, left a note ("I will exit this world as I entered -- innocent") and made his way onto the ledge.

As for why ... well, that's an open question, even at the end of Man on a Ledge. Nick is trying to prove his innocence with a complex plan that involves a jewelry heist, one of those high-tech capers with a lot of fancy equipment and electronic expertise that should be beyond the scope of the principals. We veterans of the Oceans 11 series, various Missions Impossible and other such improbable through-the-transom robberies have stopped troubling ourselves with questions like "how," but Man on a Ledge pushes even that envelope. Moreover, why Nick has to be on a ledge -- except for a moment of misdirection during the heist -- is never answered, which is quite a problem, given the movie's title.

Nevertheless, there he is, and when the police arrive to talk him down, he asks for Det. Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), a psychologist with a recent trauma in her life: A potential suicide she was rescuing from a bridge jumped off anyway. That failure, and the fact that she's a woman, have made Lydia an outsider in the police department, just the sort of person who might believe Nick's innocence.

While Lydia and Nick bond through the window, Nick's brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are crawling around inside the nearby Englander building. It's owned by David Englander (an alarmingly thin-looking Ed Harris), an evil New York developer who names buildings after himself and had the temerity to lose millions in the financial crisis and earn it all back. Englander is a human sneer in a $3,000 suit.

In his feature-film debut, director Asger Leth can't find the tone he is seeking of burgeoning romance on the ledge -- Worthington and Banks have no chemistry. He falls back on the old reliable trick of having the woman strip down to her underwear, and it almost works, too: Genesis Rodriguez is, if you'll pardon the mixed testaments, a revelation.

But it's not enough.

Man on a Ledge really doesn't make much sense, and Worthington can't make us care enough about Nick that we're willing to overlook it. It makes you wonder how this loopy story would have played out with a different cast. Edward Burns -- an actor who never really lived up to the promise of The Brothers McMullen, but never lost his air of easy smarm -- shows up as a policeman, an attractive guy with a commanding edge. Stick him on a window ledge, and even the New York crowds might be rooting for him.

© Copyright (c) dose.ca