“Cliffhanger” (1993)

Cliffhanger

Grade: C+

Cliffhanger delivers what it promises and nothing more: Sylvester Stallone as a badass mountain ranger fighting terrorists in the Rockies.

Directing:

Cliffhanger shows us some breathtaking big-budget footage of the snowcapped Colorado Rocky Mountains, along with some truly amazing stunts, such as the Mission Impossible-worthy aerial transfer scene (which paid British stuntman Simon Crane $1 million due to its difficulty, the most expensive stunt in movie history) — gotta hand it to him, director Renny Harlin (previous credits include Die Hard 2 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4) knows his way around a thriller.

Acting:

The acting in the film is about what you’d expect: Stallone is Stallone, more muscle than man, dispatching his enemies by shoulder-pressing them into stalactites; John Lithgow is passable as the villain, a cartoonish evil mastermind with a bad English accent; and the rest of the cast — other than the stuntmen, who are the real MVPs of Cliffhanger — is expendable.

Writing:

Written by Stallone and Michael France, Cliffhanger rips off a bit from Die Hard (1988), Road House (1989), Point Break (1992), maybe even The Empire Strikes Back (1980), throwing in as many action clichés as possible to make a movie that is as entertaining as it is dumb, as predictable as it is unbelievable.

Music:

The sweeping, often beautiful, orchestral score from composer Trevor Jones echoes his previous work in The Last of the Mohicans, but it also bears some similarities to John Williams’ work in Star Wars Episode V, which gives the uncanny feeling that this adventure is taking place in Hoth.

Ending (SPOILERS):

Anyone expecting Cliffhanger’s ending to make a clever nod to the title is giving the film way too much credit: the finale is über-conclusive, almost brazenly so, with hero Stallone killing bad guy Qualen (Lithgow) by throwing him and his helicopter off the mountain (the fourth character to fall hundreds of feet to his death). Then, after only a few seconds of dénouement, the end credits roll.

“It amazes me, in this day and age, when a man would put money before the personal safety of himself and his bitch.” — Kynette

Why Cliffhanger gets a C+

Bad but entertaining, dumb but action-packed, like Stallone’s Cobra (1986) or Schwarzenegger’s True Lies (1994).

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