In “Man on a Ledge,” Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an honest cop who finds himself sentenced to prison for a crime that he did not commit. Desperate, he seizes the first chance to escape. Hours later, he is standing on a window ledge high above New York City. Anthony Mackie plays Nick's best friend and colleague Mike Ackerman.
“A lot of it was real,” says Mackie, noting that he conquered his fear of heights on a trip to Arizona in 2000 during which he went sky-diving. “We were shooting on the 22nd floor at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan for a good bit of the movie. A lot of the stuff with Sam being outside of the hotel was not CGI. It was all him really out there.”
Of course, later scenes in which Worthington, Mackie and other cast members leap from ledge to ledge were performed on a set. However, even that had an element of danger to it as said set was positioned 10 stories high. And that is not all that the actor had to endure. Mackie's character also takes a bullet to the chest at one point during “Man on a Ledge.”
“It is very painful,” says Mackie, noting that the squibs that are used in motion picture special effects come in several types with multiple levels of explosivity. “It feels like getting hit with a paintball. You definitely know when they go off. A lot of times when you are watching movies and people get shot, they look like they really got shot. That is because the squibs scare the shit out of you.”
Mackie was initially drawn to the movie by its compelling script. The actor explains that it typically takes him a long time to read through a script and he often even finds himself falling asleep before reaching the end of any given page. However, he burned through Pablo F. Fenjves's script for “Man on a Ledge” in an hour and a half.
“It was a real page-turner,” Mackie adds. “There are a lot of suspense/thriller action movies but a lot of times it is suspense but no thrill or thrill but no suspense. I feel like this is one of those movies that goes back to the day when action movies were fun. You get to the end and you are not let down. You figure it out and it is like, 'Ohhh!' I feel like this is one of those movies that really works in all accords.”
Mackie notes that director Asger Leth is big on character development. After all, the more that an audience cares about a character, the more likely they are to root for him or her until the very end. However, needless to say, with so many twists and turns in “Man on a Ledge,” it may not be so surprising to learn that Mackie's character is hiding a deep, dark secret or two.
“I learned that I definitely have the potential to be a bad guy,” Mackie jokes. “It is a conscious effort of my every day existence to not do something that would get me arrested. There is just something fun, different and cool about being a villain. It is always more interesting for an actor to play a bad guy than a good guy.”
“Man on a Ledge” (PG-13 – 102 minutes) opens Friday at movie theaters throughout the Valley. Visit FirstLook.com for specific showtimes.
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