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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Man On A Ledge

In ‘Man On A Ledge’, Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop who gets a room with a view in New York’s famed Roosevelt Hotel, then heads for that ledge. But it soon becomes obvious that Nick doesn’t have suicide on his mind. That’s because he’s also a convict who escaped from prison while serving a 25-year sentence for stealing a $40 million dollar diamond from wealthy businessman David Englander (played by Ed Harris). But Nick claims he was framed, and while all eyes are on Nick, his younger brother Joey (played by Jamie Bell) and Joey’s girlfriend Angie (played by Genesis Rodriguez) are using the diversion to break into Englander’s building across the street from the Roosevelt to find the diamond Nick claims was never stolen in the first place. As Joey and Angie race to bypass Englander’s security, a recently disgraced police negotiator (played by Elizabeth Banks) and Nick’s former partner (played by Anthony Mackie) attempt to find out what Nick is really up to.

‘Man On A Ledge’ is basically a straight up, relatively un-ambitious heist and police thriller, and aside from some leaps of logic — like how Joey and Nick know so much about thwarting Englander’s high-tech security system — ‘Man On A Ledge’ mostly works, despite the fact that Worthington isn’t a terribly good actor, and you never believe Nick is going to jump.

But in addition to some jabs at a spotlight-grubbing media and the morbid curiosity of onlookers (many of whom shout for Nick to jump), I noticed an interesting political theme that’s becoming more common in otherwise popcorn fare. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 66% of Americans, an all-time high, feel that there are “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor. With the bank bailouts, outrageous bonuses for CEOs, the Occupy movement, and more awareness about income inequality and the fact that multi-millionaires like Mitt Romney pay a lower tax rate than you do, people of all parties feel more than ever that the rich have fixed the game, and their skyrocketing fortunes have come at the expense of regular working people.

What does this have to do with ‘Man On A Ledge’? Nick and Joey are from a decidedly working-class family from Long Island while David Englander is a wealthy real estate mogul whose plan to frame Nick might have something to do with recouping money lost during the housing bust. In that sense, we have shades of a modern-day working-class revenge fantasy, where the honest blue collar guy is pushed too far and decides to fight back against a wealthy real estate tycoon who is willing to destroy innocent lives to make up for bad investments. In essence, Nick has been forced to “bail out” Englander, whose motto is “If somebody takes something from you, you take more back, because that’s America.” It’s a sentiment that sums up the attitude of so many corporations and wealthy republican donors who claim they’re owed payback with interest after years of paying what they consider to be an unfair share of tax dollars.

This might seem like a stretch, and ‘Man On A Ledge’ is, above all else, about its title. But with Americans increasingly frustrated by how the rich have fixed the system in their favor, villains representing banks, mortgage lenders, and the immoral wealthy may illicit the sort of visceral dislike that Russian bad guys used to get during the Cold War. Republicans may cry “class warfare”, but studios might make the capitalist argument that they’re simply giving consumers what they want.

‘Man On A Ledge’ is rated PG-13 and opens today.