Man on a Ledge is an often preposterous, occasionally thrilling film with a ridiculous script and numerous supporting characters in need of more development. Director Asger Leth takes a new spin on the heist movie — adding in other well-known plot-lines, incorporating the classic revenge drama, and featuring a protagonist with nothing to lose — that fails altogether to deliver on an interesting premise.

Sam Worthington stars as Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop charged with stealing an extremely valuable diamond from the rich mogul David Englander, played by Ed Harris. Cassidy is adamant about his innocence, so much so that he places himself on a ledge far above a New York City street and threatens to jump, his motives are not completely known to the police who arrive on the scene. These police, detectives and negotiators are played by such actors as Edward Burns and Titus Welliver, with Anthony Mackie as Cassidy’s former partner, and Elizabeth Banks as Lydia Mercer, the officer Cassidy requests arrive on the scene to help him.

As it soon becomes clear to both the viewer and Mercer, Cassidy has some ulterior motives to simply wanting to commit a public suicide. What Mercer doesn’t know, however, is that a robbery is going on not far away, as Cassidy’s brother, Joey (Jaime Bell) and his girlfriend, Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), attempt to break in to the highly protected vaults of owned by David Englander.

The opening few scenes are quite sleek and somewhat interesting, but this all changes as the film soon employs flashbacks and exposition to build up the structure of the story and its characters, which simply doesn’t work. In fact, many of the more intriguing plot-lines presented go altogether unexplored or are abandoned. As if to add to the building number of issues, screenwriter Pablo F. Fenjves and Leth employ several very cliched scenes and too much awful dialogue and plot devices to ignore, not to mention truly baffling handling of the movie’s extra’s, who are laughable.

The truly thrilling moments are both solid and fleeting, which include an oddly placed car chase near the beginning of the film, as well as the far too brief moments out on the ledge. The story gets sidetracked by multiple plot-lines and uninteresting character interactions marred by exposition and bad dialogue. In fact, the exposition hurts the film even further, as it often reveals the film’s twists before they arrive, causing several potential thrills to go by the wayside.

The film abandons any potential and quickly becomes dragged down by a shoddy, cliché-ridden script featuring at times laughably bad dialogue. Director Asger Leth is able to utilize the ledge to the movie’s benefit at times, but not enough of the film’s run time is spent on the ledge, as the story instead focuses on backstory and a heist that goes unfulfilled. Man on a Ledge is so maddeningly unaware of its limits, that after a while I just wanted Cassidy to jump.

Grade: D+

Rated: PG-13 (for violence and brief strong language.)

Man on a Ledge opens nationwide January 27th.