Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Ledge Blu-ray Movie Review

Can an atheist be altruistic?

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 6, 2011

The “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist movement—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett—have led a charge in the publishing industry with their faith-skewering polemics on science, reason, morality, and the perceived dangers of religious belief, but the movie industry has been understandably cautious to follow. It’s a touchy subject in America, for one, and two, preachy films of all stripes are often justifiably shunned at the box office. No one wants a sermon when they’re just trying to escape for a few hours. The cinematic championing of atheism, then, has largely been relegated to documentaries like Jesus Camp and Religulous, with few notable examples of narrative, dramatic films that deal with the reason vs. faith debate. But within the last two years there have been at least three films that come from a distinctly atheistic perspective—Ricky Gervais’ The Invention of Lying, the Pierce Brosnan-starring Salvation Boulevard, and The Ledge, a new film by writer/director/journalist Matthew Chapman, who, coincidentally enough, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Of the three films, The Ledge is the most serious and heavy-handed, and its overly didactic take on the virtues of non-belief and the vices of fundamentalism ultimately spoils what could’ve been a decent thriller.

Sons of Anarchy’s long-haired and leonine star Charlie Hunnam plays Gavin, a hotel manager whom we meet as he clambers up onto the ledge of a tall building in some unnamed southern city, quickly drawing a crowd of onlookers below. Police detective Hollis Lucetti (Terrence Howard), who isn’t having the greatest day himself—he just found out he’s sterile and that his wife has obviously been lying about where their kids came from— is dispatched to the roof to talk Gavin out of leaping to certain death. They go through the usual rigmarole, with Lucetti pleading, “You don’t have to do this,” and Gavin countering with, “Actually, I do. I really do,” but it becomes increasingly clear that Gavin isn’t just some sad-sack who wants to end his life out of misery or existential malaise. In a backhanded Machiavellian bargain, Gavin has been instructed to stand at the ledge all morning— thinking about what he’s about to do—and leap promptly at noon. If he doesn’t, the woman he loves will be killed. What course of events could’ve led to such a ridiculous arrangement, you ask? Well, you’re in luck, as most of the rest of the film is told in chronological flashbacks, eventually taking us up to the dreaded countdown to twelve o’clock. To pass the time and reflect on everything he’s been through in the past few weeks, Gavin tells Lucetti —and us, of course—the full story, starting from the beginning.

I won’t give too much away, but the Ledge is primarily concerned with one question: How can an atheist, with no belief in an afterlife—let alone one that rewards the good and punishes the wicked—be truly altruistic, to the point of sacrificing himself for another? Gavin is the non-believer in question, a staunch rationalist and liberal who—to writer/director Matthew Chapman’s credit—isn’t a one-dimensional atheist superhero. He’s smart and sticks to his guns in a debate, but he’s also brash, confrontational, and can be an ass when it comes to ridiculing the beliefs of the faithful or searching, like his gay, HIV-positive roommate Chris (Christopher Gorham), who frequents the town’s Kabballah center. When Gavin hires girl-next- door Shana (Liv Tyler)—a former hooker turned reluctant evangelical—to be a maid in the hotel, her hardcore fundamentalist husband Joe (Patrick Wilson) invites Gavin and Chris over for dinner, mistaking them for a couple and, during grace, even praying that god “grant them the strength to fight what is abominable in your eyes.” Shana apologizes to Gavin for the homophobic remark, and over time they begin to confide in one another, with Gavin making it his personal mission to “liberate” her from her self-righteously tyrannical husband. Inevitably, they fall in love, and as you can guess from rooftop situation that starts the film, this doesn’t sit well with Joe, who gets scarier and more fervent once he learns about the affair.

The problem with The Ledge is that it’s way too pointed, to the extent of becoming a kind of moralistic fable, with characters that— rather than seeming like actual human beings—really only serve to express different philosophical standpoints. Joe is the narrow-minded ideologue who refuses to acknowledge that god might not exist. Gavin is the exasperated non-believer, throwing his hands up in the face of irrationality and forced to prove he’d be willing to die for his allegiance to secular humanism. Chris is the spiritual seeker, and Shana just wants to be comforted by a cosmic father figure since she was abandoned by her own dad as a child. Not even the generally solid acting can make these characters seem like anything other than cut-out caricatures, especially Joe, who is ridiculously, almost comically zealous. (That said, Wilson is pretty terrifying here.) Even if you fundamentally agree with Chapman’s atheistic message, you’ll be put off by how ham-handedly he tries to work it into the dialogue. Midway through the film there’s an argument between Gavin and Joe that might as well be lifted straight from a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Christian apologist William Lane Craig, with Gavin talking about how he cast god aside along with other “imaginary friends” like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and Joe firing back with, “What did God do to you to make you so angry at Him?” It’s all a bit much, and it unfortunately overshadows the natural drama of the story. Ultimately—and I promise, this isn’t what happens—you’ll want Terrence Howard to push Charlie Hunnam over the ledge just to get it all over with.

The Ledge Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As the subject matter and style of the film at times seems more fitting for a made-for-TV movie, it's somehow appropriate that The Ledge has a very TV drama-ish visual quality. After all, this is a low-budget indie drama shot digitally with low-budget lighting on rather cheap-looking sets, so it looks more like something you'd see on cable television than a feature film. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; it's just something to be aware of. That said, on its own merits, the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded digital-to-digital transfer is more than adequate and at times even impressive. There's really no stylization here whatsoever; Chapman and his DP are going for a strictly realistic look, with understated contrast—that is, not boosted beyond what's normal in real life—and colors that are dense but natural. Black levels are generally strong and skin tones are warm and consistent. Where the picture excels is in its level of clarity; close-ups display all the fine facial detail there is to see and even longer shots look suitably sharp, revealing—for instance— the thin wale of Gavin's corduroy jacket. Finally, noise never spikes beyond a reasonable level and there are no real encode-related distractions.

The Ledge Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Ledge is the epitome of a dialogue-driven drama—really, face to face talking constitutes about 90% of the film—so don't expect an intense aural experience from this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. The rear channels are really only used for extremely light ambience—wind, bird noises, traffic sounds—and bleeding room for the film's quiet score. Most importantly, dialogue is always clean, unmuffled, and easy to understand, and that's honestly all there is to say here. The track effectively does what it needs to do, which admittedly isn't much. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles in bright yellow lettering.

The Ledge Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews: The only real bonus on the disc is an extensive series of interviews with most of the film's key players, from actors Charlie Hunnam (26:26) and Patrick Wilson (18:43), to director Matthew Chapman (19:40) and producers Mark Damon (28:45) and Michael Mailer (12:00).
• Trailer (1080p, 2:06)

The Ledge Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Director Matthew Chapman has a valid point to make in The Ledge—namely, that secular humanists are just as capable as religious folk of being moral and self-sacrificially altruistic—but he goes about pounding it in with a hammer-like lack of subtlety. The film might be of fleeting interest to those who already bat for Team Atheism, but I doubt it's going to change many—if any—minds. If you're still interested, I'd suggest a rental, as there's really not much replay value here.