This nonsensical film sees an OCD-afflicted scientist fending off assassins while hanging from an aerial wire, and fails to get pulses racing for even a minute
In this silly, low-adrenaline thriller, the title star is a rickety old zip wire bolted into the side of a mountain in the Italian Dolomites that was never intended for human use. It was constructed in the first world war to sling weapons and supplies hundreds of feet down the valley – and is still used to get the occasional goat off the mountain. But for the second half of this film, a world-famous British research scientist with an extreme fear of heights dangles from it, fighting off highly skilled assassins in increasingly preposterous ways.
The scientist is Amy (MyAnna Buring); she has discovered a cure for lung cancer, and her drive is explained in syrupy hospital-ward flashbacks to her mother dying when she was a teenager. Amy also has OCD – she is so anxious about germs that she never takes off her rubber gloves, and has an assistant in her lab to do anything that involves touching or handling objects. (Like all the characters, she never gets beyond a stereotype.) Her research is bankrolled by a big pharma company, whose CEO is played by Saffron Burrows (now seemingly mandatory casting for ropey British thrillers).
Amy’s gamechanging discoveries result in an old-school conspiracy, involving a notebook with her research written in code and a trio of contract killers. Which is how Amy ends up in the Dolomites (where everyone has an English accent), halfway across a zip line. Supposedly, a human body cannot remain in a state of maximum panic for more than 30 minutes, but Amy seems to bat away her terrible fear of heights in about five minutes flat. For the audience, you’ll be lucky if this gets your pulse racing for more than two of them.
Zip Wire is on digital platforms from 31 August.