Excellent, smart action film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

A man climbs out onto the ledge outside his 15th-floor hotel room and threatens to jump. And then...nothing. As you can guess from the film's title this is not a situation that is going to be resolved quickly. This guy's going to be out on that ledge for quite a while. Knowing that we're a long way from any kind of a resolution drains much of the drama out of the film. There is the sense that the film is just biding time until it stretches itself out to proper feature length at which point something can actually happen. For much too much of this film's running time there is nothing going on. The initial shock of the man on the ledge dissipates quickly and then things become rather mundane and dull.Richard Basehart plays Robert Cosick, the man on the ledge, but it is Paul Douglas, playing the cop trying to talk him back inside, who is the real star of the film. Douglas brings some warmth and personality to the proceedings. His character, Charlie Dunnigan, is just an ordinary traffic cop who is able to reach Robert in a way all the supposedly smarter folks with all their psychobabble cannot. There's some good interplay between Dunnigan and Robert, performed wonderfully by Douglas and reasonably well by Basehart. Oddly though we end up sympathizing more with the cop than with the guy out on the ledge. We never really get to know Robert Cosick which definitely hurts the film. Eventually characters are brought in to try to explain who he is and what may have driven him to this point. But those characters don't help the film much. Agnes Moorehead plays Robert's mother who turns out to be an absolutely miserable, entirely unsympathetic character. The father shows up too and he's a total dud. By the time a character with some actual value to the story does show up it is too late to save a film which has become a bit of a snooze. The film may be only 90 minutes or so long but honestly it feels like 14 hours at times, it really drags. There's only so much you can do with a guy standing on a ledge for 14 hours. Some characters who have nothing to do with the situation are tossed in and they end up being nothing more than time-wasters. There's a group of cabbies betting on when Robert will jump. There's a young man trying to woo a pretty young woman he just met while they were both gawking at the spectacle. And, in her first film role, there's Grace Kelly playing a woman who rather bizarrely makes a life-altering decision based on the fact she sees some guy she doesn't know standing out on that ledge. The performances by Kelly and by Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget playing the young would-be couple are fine but their characters add nothing of value to the film. It's a film which begins with a shocking opening but which soon fizzles out. And after biding its time in rather boring fashion when the end comes it's not the big, dramatic finish you would hope for. The ending is very contrived and, like so much else about the film, very disappointing. Aside from a notably fine performance by Douglas there is not much to recommend you spending 90 minutes watching 14 Hours.

After passing on a hotel waiter's delivery of breakfast, troubled young Richard Basehart (as Robert Cosick) steps out on the ledge of a New York City hotel, and threatens to jump. Fifteen floors down, he is spotted by beat street policeman Paul Douglas (as Charlie Dunnigan). As a multitude of onlookers, punsters, policeman, and media crowd around, officer Douglas tries to talk "loopy" Mr. Basehart off the ledge. Basehart's psyche is made more insightful through conversations with Douglas, and a parade of interested parties; including self-centered mother Agnes Moorehead (as Christine Hill Cosick), henpecked father Robert Keith (as Paul E. Cosick), and wholesome ex-girlfriend Barbara Bel Geddes (as Virginia Foster).Director Henry Hathaway's "Fourteen Hours" milks billowing curtains and skyline angles for all they are worth, registering a great amount of anxiety for his "Man on the Ledge". Fidgeting and ghostly, Basehart is terrific as the psychotic suicide hopeful who states, "Life stinks." Douglas is a perfect good-natured contrast, who tries to explain life's worth in family homilies (which are impossible for Basehart to understand). Both actors had underrated careers. Happily, Basehart won the National Board of Review's 1951 "Best Actor" award for his ledge work. Interestingly, Jan Sterling won the Board's 1951 "Best Actress" award for "Ace in the Hole", which also dramatized a "breathtaking spectacle".In subplots, love blossoms for handsome Jeffrey Hunter & pretty Debra Paget (as Danny & Ruth), while Grace Kelly & James Warren (as Mr. & Mrs. Fuller) struggle with impending divorce. These stories don't add or subtract much from the main event - Will Basehart jump, or won't he? - It might have been interesting and artful for writer John Paxton to parallel Ms. Kelly's marriage woes with Ms. Moorehead's early life and marriage; the sense of generational doom would be left open-ended, with the future resting with Hunter and Paget. By the way, the cast of thousands includes dozens of "bit" players worth connecting with (I started with switchboard-ready Sandra Gould of "Bewitched", and found something right from George Putnam).******** Fourteen Hours (3/6/51) Henry Hathaway ~ Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes

This is, I think, what they called a "high concept" film. Let's have a young man climb out on the ledge of a New York hotel and build up a back story about his tsuris and at the same time tell small tales of the diverse witnesses to the guy's dilemma.That precisely how the movie moves along from point to point, a little mechanically, but suspenseful and engaging. It's professionally handled by Henry Hathaway, a director who probably had little sympathy for a temperamentally unstable fellow who couldn't handle his hysterical and self-indulgent Mamma, Agnes Moorehead.The goods are delivered. Most of the work is done by Richard Basehart as the would-be suicide and Paul Douglas as the traffic cop who befriends him and alternately wheedles and lambastes him.Movies mavens will be left agog after they see the list of supporting and bit players, many uncredited, who were to go on to climb to dazzling heights in Hollywood, either as stars or as indispensable supports -- Grace Kelly, Jeffrey Hunter, Jeff Corey, Brian Keith, Richard Beymer, and John Cassavetes among them.The movie doesn't wallow in easy sentiment. It's pretty tough-minded. But a modern treatment, if it had any pretense to realism, would be far more cynical. The only characters here who exploit Basehart's impending self destruction are a nutty preacher who naturally belongs to no recognized church, a cabbie who organizes a pool to bet on when Basehart jumps, and of course the press. But nobody in the streets complains that a weakling like Basehart, who is probably a sissy just out for attention, deserves to die. And if any of the bystanders jumps up and down yelling, "Jump! Jump!", it must have been while I was in a period of microsleep. In 1951, it's my impression, Americans in general weren't so anxious to see a sensational splash on Broadway, not even New Yorkers.Worth catching.

A movie like this presents a real challenge. After all, the producers have got what amounts to a single set, two main characters, and 90 minutes to fill. So to please ticket-buying customers, they better come up with something good. Fortunately, they do. The plot is a literal cliffhanger or maybe skyscraper is more apt--- will a suicidal young Richard Basehart jump from his 20th floor ledge or not. He certainly has audiences on both sides of the screen glued to the suspense, at the same time city police try to convince him it's better to be an unhappy bi-ped than a bird without wings. Good thing that the producers also come up with one of the best young actors of the time--- Basehart, who acts just foggy enough to teeter on a ledge and play Hamlet. Then there's that genial roughneck Paul Douglas as the cop who tries to persuade him that it's really better to be than not-to-be.Note how ace studio director Hathaway keeps the hotel room bustling so that the static ledge shots don't become boring. Also, note how TV is competing with radio coverage at a time when the tube was just beginning to take off. Then there're the subplots that take the pulse of the city. The cynical cabbies do offer comic relief. But, frankly, I could have done without the young lovers, Paget and Hunter, who appear better suited to a Pepsi commercial, or the Grace Kelly soap opera that comes across as trite and unimaginative. But I guess the producers figured a variety of relief was needed. Also, I can see from the close-ups why Hitchcock liked Barbara Bel Geddes (Virginia). She pulls off the really difficult task of being sweetly wholesome without drowning the part in sugar.All in all, there's enough skill and craftsmanship in this TCF production to keep even digital- age audiences on the edge of their seat.