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If You Liked "Skyscraper," You'll Love "To The Limit"!

Robert I. Hedges | 02/26/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I had previously assumed that "Skyscraper" had to be the worst Anna Nicole Smith movie ever made, but "To The Limit" is a strong contender in every way. In this one Anna plays Colette, a CIA agent who loses her shady art-dealer husband to a mysterious explosion while simultaneously across town mobsters Frank DaVinci (Joey Travolta) and Lupe are getting married. After seeing some hilarious composite footage of a helicopter being shot down by a sociopath, numerous ninjas dressed in black with ski masks and machine guns invade the DaVinci wedding, which quickly devolves into a shooting gallery. Lupe is killed, but Frank rallies back to life while we meet the crooked crew. They all have names like Joey and Philly Bambino, and really needed a dialogue coach or a trip to Italy to master their accents. Since this makes so much sense so far, the first curve ball (yawn) involves Frank being an agent during the Vietnam war when he was sent to Hanoi to assassinate General Tang. ("You remember that last black ops we had in Hanoi?") Ignoring the ludicrous impossibilities of that as a premise, it serves to tie the whole movie together in a way I can only guess at, while padding the running time immensely.

Colette invades Las Vegas and immediately has a shootout, steals a police car, and runs it into a helicopter (don't ask), defeating ninjas and local law enforcement officials alike. Despite numerous plot detours (the petulant runaway teenage girl, a killer nurse, the worst Las Vegas review in history, Philly Bambino's serial infidelity, Colette taking a shower, etc.) the main characters finally rendezvous in Frank's hotel room. There Colette reveals that she is a CIA operative (yeah, that's plausible), but while she says "I was proud to work for my company" (groan), she fell for a mobster, and went rogue. At least that's what I think was going on: between her diction and an incoherent script, it's a bit hard to tell what's happening with any degree of precision. She says she's been hiding out "up in the mountains" and that a CIA boss named Arthur Jameson (creepy, tattooed Jack Bannon) is the man who killed Lupe and tried to kill Frank. The raw emotion she displays when this is revealed must be seen to be believed!

This whole thing boils down to a CD-ROM that Jameson wants, as it contains information that can indict him, and which a mysterious man named China (Michael Nouri) furnishes to Frank, getting blown up in the process (don't miss the riveting monologue about playing gin rummy with Jimmy Hoffa). China advises Frank to go to the FBI, because they hate the CIA more than they hate organized crime, and with that established Colette has to jump back in the shower. Of course Frank and Colette fall for each other in a truly loathsome display. Travolta, the old goat, doublecrosses Colette and takes the disc in the middle of the night, and Colette calls Jameson in a fit of pique. After Philly Bambino gets a well-deserved Thai gasoline massage (I am not joking), a showdown is arranged between the CIA and the mob. Question: why does nobody think to burn a copy of the CD? Wouldn't that make it less worth dying for?

There is a plot twist at the end that is not totally unsurprising, so for that it gets originality points over "Skyscraper," but it's just a ruse to initiate more gunplay. Just when you suspected the film could get no stupider, you will be proven wrong in a massive way: there's a hostage exchange to perform on the Hoover Dam! The swap is simple: the CD for a mobster. (Again, people, burn a copy of the CD! Hello?) The scene which follows is entirely responsible for my two star rating of this film, as in most other ways it's inferior to even "Skyscraper." The scene that sealed the deal for me was the hostage exchange, specifically, when Frank hands Colette the CD and she hurls it like a throwing star, embedding it deep in Jameson's skull, causing him to fall over Hoover Dam to his death. That is a priceless moment of cinematic cheese, and my only regret is that to get to it you have to suffer through 89 minutes of truly lamentable filmmaking first."