The Edge

This is my kinda guy movie, positing as it does that one's ability to survive in the wilderness is determined not on how tough one is, but on how much trivial information one has retained from a lifetime of book-learnin'. (David Mamet's script was originally titled "Bookworm"; I suppose studio execs feared that that word would frighten their target audience away.) With Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as the men who find themselves in a pickle when their plane crashes in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska, and scenery this splendiferous, only an unprecedented (from Mamet) mediocre plot could possibly keep me from drooling in my seat...and that's what The Edge is saddled with, incredibly. (It's also saddled with Elle MacPherson, who cannot act, but she's quickly left behind so that the men can be Men.) All is well until Mamet introduces a painfully predictable and totally unnecessary plot twist in the final reel--as if watching the protagonists fighting the elements and Bart the Enormous Bear (from The Bear, Legends of the Fall...pretty much every movie you've ever seen with a bear in it) weren't drama enough. Optional. (M. D'Angelo)[Blu-ray Review—May 25, 2010—Fox, 117 min., R, $24.99—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 1997's The Edge features a nice transfer and a 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack. Extras are limited to trailers. Bottom line: an unexceptional Blu-ray debut for a so-so adventure thriller.]