Asger Leth is responsible for the action thriller Man on a Ledge. The film is about an ex-cop named Nick Cassidy who is wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.
Nick hatches a dangerous plan to clear his name and find the people who framed him. He checks into a room on the 21st floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and says he’s going to jump off the ledge in front of the window. Lydia Spencer, a police officer and veteran negotiator, tries to stop him, but when she does, she realizes something bigger is afoot.
Several critics disliked the 2012 film. Some said the plot twists weren’t interesting enough, and others didn’t like it because it depends a lot on Nick Cassidy staying on the ledge for long. Well, no matter how the film is received, the story is interesting enough to make us wonder if it’s based on reality. If you have the same question, let’s find out.
Is Man on a Ledge based on true events?
No, Man on a Ledge is not based on a true story. It is based on a script that Pablo F. Fenjves came up with. In an interview with ScreenSlam, the film’s director Asger Leth said that the film’s dramatic plot was based on two key ideas. The first uses old-fashioned ways of telling stories in a new setting. So the story of Man on a Ledge is full of old tropes like a good cop wronged by the system, a broken cop trying to get back on his feet, a huge conspiracy behind a single event, and more.
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A Man on a Ledge Nick Cassidy was a singer
The balance between reality and fiction is the second thing Asger Leth has always been interested in. He tied that part directly to what Nick Cassidy is doing on the ledge in the movie. Everyone thinks he’s a bad cop trying to kill himself. But he prepares everything and plans everything so that his brother and girlfriend can pull off a robbery. Nick always knows how to piss off people on the street, change their mind, or even divert their attention, just like a director.
Asger Leth said in the interview: “I like to play with the balance between what is real and what is not real, both as a genre and as a subject. I think that would appeal to any filmmaker as their whole job is to make something seem real which it isn’t. So it’s interesting to bring this theme directly into the language of the film and the lives of the characters.
Another interesting thing about the movie is that it contains parts of a “bottle movie,” which are movies that only take place in one location. This subgenre is best seen in movies like 127 Hours, Coherence, and The Breakfast Club. While it doesn’t follow the formula exactly, all of the scenes involving Lydia and Nick appear to be straight out of a bottle movie. The way they talked about it made me think of the movie “Phone Booth” which is one of the best “bottle movies” of the 2000s. In the film, main character Stuart Shepherd is held hostage in a phone booth by an armed extortionist.
A Man on a Ledge Sam Worthington is an actor
In Phone Booth, the mysterious killer tells Stuart to only speak to him and threatens to kill him if he tries to leave the booth or ask for help. The relationship between Stuart and the unknown caller and the relationship between Lydia and Nick feels a bit like that. However, in “Man on a Ledge” the roles are reversed. Although Lydia is the one leading the conversation, Nick calls the shots and the cop has no choice but to follow suit. Even though the movie isn’t based on a true story, it feels like it’s been seen before because it uses a lot of typical movie themes and there are many other movies with similar plots.
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plot
In New York City, a man named Joe Walker checks into the Roosevelt Hotel, goes to his room on the 21st floor, and climbs out onto the ledge, seemingly ready to jump. The crowd below calls the police, and while Jack Dougherty tries to speak to Walker, Dante Marcus keeps the crowd under control. But Walker won’t speak to suspended negotiator Lydia Mercer until he saves a cop who is about to kill himself on the Brooklyn Bridge. Lydia goes to the hotel room and gets Walker’s fingerprints from a cigarette they share. At first, Walker wouldn’t tell her who he was, even wiping everything he touched in the main room to get rid of his fingerprints. Dougherty has them examined and discovers that “Walker” is actually Nick Cassidy, a former police officer who was arrested for stealing the $40 million Monarch diamond from businessman David Englander. Nick was sentenced to 25 years in prison but got out of prison a month before the main events of the film because he was allowed to go to his father’s funeral. Nick, on the other hand, says he is innocent and the Englishman tricked him into stealing the diamond as part of an insurance scam to keep his money because the Englishman lost his fortune in a bad deal and was too proud to own the diamonds to sell .
Nick distracts the police while his brother Joey and Joey’s girlfriend Angie break into Englander’s vault across the street. They use Nick’s antics as a cover to detonate explosives on the roof to get in, steal the diamond and prove Nick’s innocence. Cassidy has to ambiguously tell Joey and Angie what to do over a headset without telling the police about her plan. Dougherty tells Marcus who Nick is, and Marcus tells the security team at the jewelry store to check the vault. Joey and Angie hide in a ceiling shaft to avoid them, but they don’t find the diamond. They deliberately set off the heat-sensitive alarms to trick Englander into getting the diamond, and then they waited for him in his office, robbed him at gunpoint and forced him to tie himself to his safe. Mike Ackerman, Nick’s ex-partner, shows up at the hotel with evidence that Nick is up to something and asks to be let into Nick’s room. Lydia doesn’t believe in him and Dougherty agrees with her. Ackerman says he found plans for bombs in a storage unit Nick rented and is certain Nick will detonate an explosive somewhere. As the bomb squad clears the crowd, Lydia calls the interns believing Nick is innocent. She finds out that three of Englander’s hired cops, Ackerman, Marcus and a dead cop named Walker, whose name Cassidy used when checking into the hotel, were suspected of corruption.
When Joey and Angie arrive at the hotel, they give the bag with the diamond in it to the hotel concierge. As he puts the bag on the rack, the concierge steals the diamond. Englander calls Marcus, one of the corrupt cops who helped him frame Nick, and tells him to catch Joey and Angie when they reach the street. Nick begins running around the hotel with a tactical team chasing after him. At one point, the concierge gives him a disguise with the diamond hidden in one of the pockets and tells him, “Everybody’s cheering for you, kid.” Marcus follows Nick onto the roof, where he has Lydia arrested for getting in the way was. Lydia gets that off the roof so Marcus can take care of Nick on his own. Englander brings Joey and Angie with him and tells Nick that if he doesn’t get the diamond, he will throw Joey off the roof. Joey tries to stop Nick from returning it, but he continues anyway. Lydia escapes the police while in an elevator and runs back to the roof. Marcus tries to get Nick to jump off the roof, but Ackerman comes and shoots Marcus, injuring Marcus. Nick rushes to the aid of Ackerman, who apologizes and says he didn’t know the Englishman would say Nick stole the diamond. Marcus is alive because he wears a vest that protects him from bullets. He is about to kill Nick when Lydia comes and shoots him. Seeing Englander leave the premises and waving at him, Nick jumps off the roof and onto an airbag that the police had previously deployed. He chases after Englander, beats him with the help of a bystander and pulls the diamond he just gave Nick out of his jacket to prove Nick’s innocence to the police and the public. Englishman arrested for insurance fraud
Later, Nick is cleared of all charges and released from prison. He meets Joey, Angie and Lydia at a bar owned by Nick’s father. There, the bartender, who is also the hotel’s concierge, turns out to be Frank Cassidy, Nick and Joey’s father, who faked his own death to get Nick out of prison while pretending to go to his father’s funeral and prove his innocence. Lydia then asks Nick to “explain everything” to her before Joey proposes to Angie a diamond ring he likely stole from Englander’s vault. She says yes, and they all have a party.
development
News that Jamie Bell had joined the cast broke on September 3, 2010.
The first scenes were shot in New York City on October 30. On November 1, it was confirmed that Ed Harris and Titus Welliver had joined the cast.
On November 2, 2010, the first picture from the set was shown to the public.
On November 5, 2010, the first sneak peek poster for the film was released. Summit Entertainment released the first trailer for the film on September 22, 2011. Summit Entertainment and E1 Entertainment were responsible for the film’s (UK) release.
During development, a large prop on rails was used to make the Roosevelt Hotel look taller to match the footage, which was shot in the studio rather than on top of the hotel itself. During the parts of the film where Nick walks the sides of the hotel, additional floors were added after filming, eliminating the need for a second extension. Crowds from other takes were added during editing to make them look the same throughout the film. Sam Worthington, who played the main character, said in interviews that he had a fear of heights, which he overcame while making the film.
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