Is this hollywood electrocution scenario plausible? As this question is a serious spoiler, I've written the film title below the photos
In the film, a character is sitting on a guardrail in the freezing rain. A high voltage line from a downed telephone pole falls onto the guardrail and electrifies it. The character, sitting maybe fifty feet from the point of electrical contact, drops dead almost immediately.
I was wondering how this could possibly happen. The guardrail is obviously grounded all along its length, and the character is wearing thick gloves and very heavy rubber boots for the storm. Is it possible that the power output of a high voltage line is sufficient to overcome these obstacles and put a lethal current across the heart?



The Ice storm (1997)
 A: I interpret the question as:


*

*The guardrail is electrified

*The guardrail is grounded

*The person is sitting on the guardrail


Under this scenario it's not plausible that the person dies. Electrocution happens if electricity flows through the person; if that person's body forms the "path of least resistance". In this case the electric circuit goes from the telephone pole to the guardrail to the ground, and there's clearly a path of least resistance through the guardrail (which as a metal is also a good conductor) without passing through the person's body. The rain makes the person's body wet which lowers its electric resistance, but it won't be to the point where it is lower than the metal's electric resistance.
This question's fundamentally similar to Do birds get shocked when they sit on wires?. This quote is relevant:

It would be a different story if a bird touched the ground while sitting on the wire. That would cause it to get shocked. This would also happen if a bird touched another wire with a different voltage. In these cases, the bird’s body would become a path for electricity. It would move through the bird to reach either the ground or another place with a different voltage. This is why power lines tend to be high in the air with plenty of space between the wires!

