A tapestral suspense drama about the intertwined romantic fates of a
quartet of Baton Rouge residents — each wounded in their own way, and
some more freshly than others — The Ledge exhibits a willingness
and desire to let its characters bat back and forth opposing
philosophies of life and faith more frequently found on display in
literature or off-Broadway theater. An interesting character study
only half-successfully masquerading as a kind of specifically plotted
romantic thriller, writer-director Matthew Chapman’s movie resembles
the smart and sensitive but still gangly teenager pushed out of the
door, wearing clothes they really don’t want to wear, to the party they
really don’t wish to attend.

The Ledge unfolds largely in flashback, with hotel manager Gavin Nichols (Charlie Hunnam) perched high atop a building, seemingly ready to plunge to his death. Detective Hollis Lucelli (Terrence Howard) is dispatched to try to talk him down, and Gavin feeds him a hell of a revelation — he has to stand there until noon, and then jump, or someone else will die. The bulk of the movie, then, is comprised of Gavin’s story to Hollis, though complicated by the fact that the latter has just found out that he is sterile, and therefore not the biological father of the two children he shares with his wife.

On the recommendation of an employee, Gavin hires Shana Harris (Liv Tyler, shifting her demure smile into overdrive), who as coincidence would have it has also just moved in down the hall from Gavin with her husband Joe (Patrick Wilson). A friendly get-together between the couple and Gavin and his gay roommate Chris (Chris Gorham) deteriorates when Joe’s religious fundamentalism is revealed. Slowly, Joe’s controlling and contrarian nature begins to chafe at Shana, and erode her gratefulness at saving her from a bad past. Gavin and Shana orbit around one another for a bit, but eventually succumb to physical temptation. This finally escalates into a battle of wills freighted with metaphorical import between believer and non-believer.

Writer-director Matthew Chapman’s ambition and intellectual leanings help drive and push The Ledge in interesting ways. The film’s dialogue is thoughtful throughout with respect to its character’s feelings, if sometimes a tad inorganic in its religious and philosophical debate. It’s rare, the movie that even tries to explore these different belief systems and the sorts of tensions they create, and The Ledge accomplishes this without shortchanging the honesty or emotional integrity of any of its characters. It’s also sincerely (if not primarily) romantic; Hunnam and Tyler have a nice chemistry, and the latter in particular captures how feminine vulnerability can sometimes slowly melt into attraction if met with the warmth of an honest and respectful embrace.

The film’s chief demerit is that the framing device of its conceit is beyond silly; it ignores the fact that the deadline imposed upon Gavin is inarguably better spent explaining his situational ultimatum rather than telling Hollis his story. Also, all of the thematic parallelism with Hollis feels like an overreach, and falls flat. The Ledge would be a leaner, more effective piece of entertainment — and hardly any less intelligent — if it jettisoned its awkward cold opening, in which Hollis learns of his sterility, and instead just reoriented itself as mostly a flashback tale of infidelity gone awry, and its terrible consequences. Narrative strain is hardly the most egregious cinematic sin, however, especially in a world with so much cookie-cutter movie product. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC Films/Sundance Now, R, 100 minutes)

Amazing things happen every day, all the world over, but the perils of sticking too closely to chronological fact in the cinematic adaptation of what by most accounts is an interesting true story are amply demonstrated in The Chameleon, an emotionally opaque drama about a wayward European youngster who — with the help of a deeply dysfunctional family, each of whom perhaps has different reasons for wanting to believe — passes himself off as a missing Louisiana teen before finally being outed by federal investigators. A solidly sketched sense of place can’t elevate this torpid tale, which lurches awkwardly to and fro, seemingly most hamstrung by a case of protagonist hot potato.

Nicholas Randall went missing when he was 12 years old. Four years later, his fractured family receives word that he’s been located in France, suffering from localized amnesia but telling a most extraordinary and terrible story, of being kidnapped, raped and tortured for years on end. Sister Kathy (Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin, above right) physically identifies him and brings this young man (Marc-Andre Grondin, above left) home to his small Louisiana hometown. Nicholas’ mother, Kimberly Miller (Ellen Barkin, in a gritty performance), however, barely speaks to him, and his older, ex-junkie brother, Brendan (Nick Stahl), can scarcely seem to contain his violent impulses around him.

While “Nicholas” tries to fit in, FBI agents Jennifer Johnson (Famke Janssen) and Dan Price (Tory Kittles, doing a cut-rate Denzel Washington impression) sense something fishy about this news story, and pump their boss (Nick Chinlund) to let them dig further. When they figure out the young man is indeed an impostor, it sets off a chain reaction of assorted bizarre behavior by the aforementioned family members, raising questions about whether this Frenchman’s crimes and head games are the worst of this messy situation.

Taken from a French journalist’s nonfiction book of the same name, The Chameleon‘s screenplay, by director Jean-Paul Salome and Natalie Carter, is seemingly hewed to conform to as exact of a chronological replication of events as possible. The problem is that this robs the movie of any sense of audience identification, or a greater momentum. We know definitively by the 30-minute mark that Grondin’s character is not Nicholas, yet we crucially do not get into the impostor’s head, rendering later passages — an abortive cat-and-mouse sequence where he summons Jennifer to a dive bar, seemingly to establish the publicly verifiable impression of her stalking him — lame and impotent.

Repeatedly, The Chameleon‘s plotting works against its better interests. A straight investigatory approach would work fine, yet the full middle third of the movie unfolds after the FBI has established this Nicholas to be a fraud, but also after (in a laughably brief scene) he is taken back in by Kathy, “because he’s still a minor.” (Are minors perpetrating crimes not subject to detention?) Instead of plumbing deeper into the divisions within the family, however, Salome and his charges try to tease along a sense of ambiguity — which means none of the townspeople can say anything about or approach Nicholas, while other characters like Kathy’s husband (Brian Geraghty) are required to act with a thunderously stupid incuriousity, saying things like, “Nicholas, or not Nicholas — I don’t know anymore, and I don’t care!”

The Chameleon earns minor points for not devolving into empty, skulking menace, but then again I gather that was never part of the original story. The film’s strength, undeniably, is its rooted sense of place, and authentic location. Shooting in Baton Rouge, Salome, production designer Martina Buckley and the rest of his crew achieve an engaging sense of grimy, swampland authenticity on a budget that had to be fairly lean. Unfortunately, it’s in the service of a grifter’s tale that’s emotionally crippled, no matter how emotionally motivated its confused central figure supposed to be. Note: In addition to opening in theaters, The Chameleon is currently available on VOD. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (LLeju Productions, R, 93 minutes)