The Edge (film)

A 1997 film directed by Lee Tamahori and written by David Mamet, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

The plot goes something like this: Charles (Hopkins) and Bob (Baldwin) are flying in a prop-plane over a remote part of Alaska. Charles is a filthy rich magazine publisher. Bob, an ambitious employee of his, says it must be hard to live rich, never knowing who your friends are, from who just wants things from you. Charles tells Bob to never feel sorry for a guy with his own plane. Bob laughs, acknowledging the joke. A moment passes. Charles, who suspects Bob is having an affair with his wife, asks Bob what he admires of his. Bob says "Well, I'll tell you Charles, I like your style... and your wife's pretty cute, too." Charles laughs, pretending like Bob was just making a joke. He turns to Bob. "So... how were you planning to kill me?"

Then their plane crashes.

Then comes the bear. . . .

Tropes used in The Edge (film) include:

• Action Survivor: Charles is well-read on surviving in the wild but has no practical experience of anything other than a comfortable life, but stills proves to be the most competent of the three protagonists and is the last man (or bear) standing by the end.
• Badass Bookworm: Charles is incredibly well read, and has accumulated a great deal of knowledge about other cultures and survival techniques over the years. He later proves equally adept at spearing enormous killer bears.
• Bittersweet Ending: Charles survives and the implication is that he has grown as a person thanks to his ordeal, but both his associates are dead, and his relationship with his wife is over now that he knows for sure that she was having an affair with one of them. To put even more of a downer on it, the wife has now lost both the men in her life.
• Black Dude Dies First: there's only three main characters, but guess which one is the first to go.
• Celebrity Survivor: Charles
• David Mamet: He wrote the script, and it is filled with his usual scathing observations on male relationships. Less Mamet Speak than may be expected, though.
• Death Equals Redemption: Just before dying, having previously suffered of a mortal wound, Bob apologises to Charles for having him betrayed..
• Distracted From Death: Bob dies unnoticed while Charles is trying to signal the rescue plane.
• Enemy Mine: Bob and Charles are not very known to like each other ( since Bob has an affair with Charles's wife), but they team up to kill the bear.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: And how! The bear in this film almost reaches levels of Cartoonish Supervillainy.
• Gold Digger: Charles' wife
• Jerkass: Bob isn't shy about letting Charles know how much he resents him for his wealth and his beautiful wife and all but taunts him about the fact that he wants her for himself--and as we later learn, has been having an affair with her. There's also that business about planning to kill him, which becomes a Moral Event Horizon later in the film after Charles has saved his life from the bear and he still presses on with his plan.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: This is how the bear dies.
• Large Ham: It's Anthony Hopkins, so he of course manages to deliver a few side orders of pork to go along with an otherwise commendably restrained performance. "He's a MANKILLER!"
  • Watch the "I'm gonna kill the bear" scene and behold Ham-to-Ham Combat.

"What one man can do, another can do!"

• Nature Hero: Played with. The billionaire character is shown to be restless in his privileged life and seems to almost enjoy being lost in the wilderness away from the stresses of his normal life and with a chance to prove he can be survivor. He copes better than his two less well-off companions, though isn't always succesful - notably when he fashions a compass but then fouls up using it by holding it too close to his metal belt buckle.
• Perma-Stubble: Both Charles and Bob have this look for the whole movie.
• Precision F-Strike: From Anthony Hopkins of all people.

"Today, I'm going to kill the motherfucker."

• Sacrificial Lion: Bob.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Jurassic Park III's Spinosaurus learned everything he knows from the bear in this film.
• Tempting Fate: Purely coincidental actually, but the airplane being severely compromised by a birdstrike, which eventually led to it crashing, came right after Charles asks Bob how he plans to kill him.
• Too Dumb to Live: "I thought I told you to bury those bloody rags instead of hanging them over a tree branch opposite the camp!" "What's the problem, it's not like there's a murderous 1800 pound bear stalking us...oh wait."
  • Entirely possible that Bob did that on purpose in the hopes that the bear would kill Charles and save him the trouble of doing it himself.
    • Or maybe he did want it to kill Stephen, so there wouldn't be any witnesses.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Charles isn't exactly ugly, but the general attitude from outside observers (and feared by Charles himself) is that his lovely wife is WAY out of his league and probably wouldn't have given him a second look had he not been wealthy.