This Week at the Movies

The theme of men pushed to their limits is an old Hollywood chestnut that is typified in two new films – “The Grey” and “Man on a Ledge” - that opened this past weekend.

The former is a survival tale in which a grizzled Liam Neeson, filmdom’s most unlikely new action star, leads a group of men through the wilderness and attempts to fend off a pack of hungry wolves.

In the picture’s opening scene, Ottway (Neeson) tries and fails to commit suicide before entering a bar at the end of the world populated with ne’er do wells who are drinking and fighting.

The men are wrapping up an oil-drilling job in the wilds of Alaska and are getting soused prior to their flight home. Ottway drifts off and dreams of his wife, whom we assume has either died or left him, and awakens to find that his plane is crashing.

Only several men survive. Among them are Ottway, an ex-con (Frank Grillo), a family man (Dermot Mulroney), a talkative young man (Joe Anderson) and a soft-spoken one (Dalls Roberts) who will later become one of the film’s sole voices of reason.

The film’s director, Joe Carnahan, has thankfully slowed down the pace of his filmmaking from his previous efforts – “The A Team” and “Smokin’ Aces.”

The picture, equal parts Sam Peckinpah and Jack London, is often intense and brutal.

The trailer might have conveyed a campy tone - complete with Neeson fist fighting wolves – but the movie’s tone is bleak, existential and, occasionally, mournful. It’s a serious genre film that is better than others of its type that tend to get released at this time of year.

“Man on a Ledge,” the weekend’s other major release, is the other side of the coin. It’s a one-note movie that rides its gimmick all the way, from its slightly preposterous beginning to its completely ludicrous ending.

Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop who has spent several years in prison after being falsely accused of stealing a priceless diamond from big shot Manhattan developer David Englander (Ed Harris).

The wronged man, his brother Joey (Jaime Bell) and Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), Joey’s girlfriend, devise an improbable plan to set things right.

Cassidy escapes from jail, checks into a hotel across the street from Englander’s office and steps out onto a ledge, drawing the attention of police and media alike. Meanwhile, Joey and Angie undertake a mission more impossible than any Tom Cruise has ever seen to retrieve Englander’s diamond and prove the developer to be a crook.

Elizabeth Banks is the hostage negotiator who, of course, believes Cassidy’s story despite skepticism from her superiors and fellow officers.

There’s obviously only so much one can do cinematically with a man on a ledge, so at least half of the proceedings are told in flashback or involve every detail of Joey and Angie’s attempt to snatch the diamond.

Movies of this sort require an extension of disbelief, but “Man on a Ledge” calls for viewers to throw all logic out the window.

Not only is Cassidy able to completely manipulate the police and media’s every move, but he is also able to orchestrate a diamond heist via an earpiece from his ledge.

By the time the film hurdles toward its preposterous conclusion and quick fix ending, you might be ready to tell it to take a flying leap.