Just the Ticket #2: A Leap Of Faith

FROM October 1, 2011: There wasn't much that I saw in the new release guide this week that drew my attention, but on star power alone, I elected to rent The Ledge, and the movie itself did not disappoint.
Following an opening sequence that invokes images of religion overshadowing an industrial apocalypse, The Ledge begins with police officer Hollis Lucetti, played by Terrence Howard (Crash), at a doctor's appointment that will bring some dark family secrets to light. We soon see him responding to an apparent suicide-in-progress, where he matches wits and woes with hotel manager Gavin Nichols (Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy), who stands on a ledge, threatening to jump at noon. But things are not as they seem, as early in their conversation, it becomes apparent that Gavin is not poised to jump of his own volition.
The bulk of the movie centers around Hunnam's character and the terrible life choices he makes regarding his gay roommate Chris (Christopher Gorham, Covert Affairs) and new neighbors, Joe and Shana (Patrick Wilson, A Gifted Man, and Liv Tyler, Armageddon).
What begins as your basic low-budget hostage negotiation film quickly proves to have more meat on its bones than much higher budget fare. Writer/Director Matthew Chapman gets ample mileage out of pitting polar opposites against one another, in the person of Hunnam's Atheist hero and Wilson's fundamentalist-Christian anti-hero, whose battle of wills is itself in opposition to the more understanding relationship between Gavin and Catholic Hollis, as well as in the impressive imagery of the opening sequence.
However, while the ever-present question of religion provides an effective plot-motivator, what truly drives our small cast to The Ledge is a series of poor choices. I call Patrick Wilson's Joe an anti-hero because he is in essence a good man who loves his wife and has only good intentions for their future, but is driven to wrongdoing by the strength of his convictions that he is "washed...and justified" in all he does. I enjoy watching Hunnam as Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy, but as the main character in The Ledge, he is outshined by Wilson, who creates an unlikeable, but impressively dimensionalized and well-acted persona for such a small-scale production.
The ongoing sequence of bad decision-making proved monotonous and frustrating at times, but such is the course of events when one is trying to make art imitate life. It was also a welcome change of pace to see that while Wilson's almost-villain was in the wrong, Hunnam's character wasn't right in how he responded to what he perceived as wrong, which lead to a realistic resolution rather than a Hollywood ending.
B+