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Man on a Ledge (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Why does this sharply photographed, sometimes well-crafted and mostly well-acted thriller fail to thrill, exactly?

Man on a Ledge looks great (especially in the digital presentation), has caper movie scenes that theoretically should provide some suspense, and sympathetic performances from a talented cast. Yet as slick as it often is, it just never manages to overcome a ever-present, underlying silliness; as far as style and execution can overcome deficiencies of plot, they don’t succeed far enough this time.

The film opens with Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) checking into a swanky Manhattan hotel and ordering room service — lobster, fries and champagne. Perhaps it was intended as a last meal, for afterwards he steps from his window to the outside ledge, vertiginously above the concrete far below.

We learn his backstory: he’s a convicted felon, out of appeal options, found guilty of stealing a diamond from Bloomberg-like 1%-er David Englander (Ed Harris). Steadfastly maintaining his innocence, he escapes custody to put himself out on that ledge — distracting the authorities while his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and Joey’s girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) burrow into Englander’s vault to prove the diamond was never stolen in the first place.

Their efforts may all be for naught if they don’t succeed before the cops send in the tactical units. Nick had better succeed in convincing police negotiator Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) that he’s been set up, to buy valuable and needed time.

You see the point about the underlying absurdity. The movie feels overwritten and horribly contrived, even for an action thriller, like a ‘40s crime film plot that just plays as corny today. The scenario could also have been lifted from the plot of a McBain film — or episode of McGarnagle — from The Simpsons, with characters like Harris’s villain seemingly torn from the same fictional universe.

The  movie’s almost in the realm of self-parody to begin with. What are we to make, for instance, of the crowd cheering for Cassidy to jump? Or that ending in the bar? I’m not sure what filmmaking acumen could have been applied to make us take this stuff seriously.

One wonders if it might have been a better choice for the filmmakers to have tilted in the direction of comedy. But they didn’t, and so Man on a Ledge is the failed thriller that it is. Maybe there was too much style, in precisely the wrong ways: part of the film’s absurdity comes from its overwrought air.

Then again, maybe director Asger Leth failed to find the correct tone. Or maybe there was just nothing to be done, finally, with Pablo F. Fenjves’s convoluted screenplay. Whatever the case, the feeling is of filmmakers earnestly trying their damndest, but never finding the same necessary balance as does their hero. Man on a Ledge is the kind of film the bad movie month of January exists for.