Cliffhanger (1993)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, and Michael Rooker
Grade: B+

Cliffhanger is such a great movie title, isn’t it?

Summary

Near the Colorado Rockies, we follow the surprisingly eventful work of the Rocky Mountain Rescue. Gabe Walker (Stallone) is a rescue ranger and the main mountain climber. His girlfriend Jessie Deighan (Janine Turner) is a pilot and works with him. To open the film, Gabe’s best friend and fellow mountain ranger Hal Tucker (Rooker) is stuck on a mountain with his girlfriend Sarah (Michelle Joyner). He injured his knee, so they need the help. Gabe and Jessie come to get the two, setting up this risky zipline thing, to transport Hal and his girlfriend from the mountain to the rescue helicopter. They get Hal across to safety, but things go awry for Sarah. Just as she gets to the middle of the zipline, her harness starts to break. Gabe tries to climb across to save her and is even able to hold onto her by hand, but he couldn’t do it for long. She slips right out of her glove, falling to her death.

Eight months later at the United States Treasury office in Denver, U.S. Treasury agent Richard Travers (Rex Linn) explains to his boss and co-worker that their next shipment he’s taking care of is the most protected shipment they have. It consists of money that isn’t even in circulation because it’s only used for the international bank exchange. The boss explains to another that this shipment will be through plane because they are untouchable compared to armored cars and trains.

It’s not like someone will hijack a plane. That would be ridiculous!

Still depressed over the incident eight months prior, Gabe has been pretty distant from everyone. He returned to the area to grab his things from his job to leave, but he stops to see Jessie. It turns out, he left everyone after the funeral, and this is the first time he’s been back since. The only reason he came back was to take Jessie with him. Unfortunately, she is still mad he left in the first place and gives him an unreasonable amount of shit for feeling sorry for himself. She refuses to go with him and leaves for work. In the sky, Agent Travers hijacks the shipment plane and kills the other agents, along with one of the pilots! The next step of the plan is to transfer the shipment to another plane in the air, led by evil British mastermind Eric Qualen (Lithgow).

Travers goes from his plane to Qualen’s plane successfully. The pilot was supposed to follow with the money but when it’s the pilot’s turn, one of the almost-dead agents shoots and kills him. The almost-dead agent officially dies right after because the plane explodes (there was a charge set to blow up by Travers). Because of all this, the cable holding all of the money falls into the mountains. Because of the multiple issues with their plane, the group of bad guys crash land into the mountainous area as well. Realizing they don’t know how to get off the mountain even if they do find the money, they decide to make a fake distress call. This call reaches Hal and Jessie, so Hal goes out to help alone. Meanwhile, Jessie goes and tries to convince Gabe to help, but he’s still not okay with being responsible for anyone’s life at the moment. Just as the FBI talk to the Treasury Department, telling them the possibility of an inside job and who Eric Qualen is, Gabe changes his mind and meets up with Hal. Hal is still pissed off at Gabe for the incident but agrees to work with him for the time being.

The two find Qualen, Travers, and the group and are immediately held at gunpoint. Qualen is pissed they didn’t bring a helicopter, but they couldn’t in those conditions. Despite this, Qualen forces Gabe and Hal to help him find the money in these mountains. Thankfully, there is a tracking device on the three briefcases the money is in. When they find the location of the first briefcase, it’s on top of some peak. Forced to go by himself and without his coat, Gabe climbs up to grab it. While he’s up there, Qualen tells his boys to kill him when he comes down. Hal tips Gabe off by yelling at him, so Gabe escapes and throws the briefcase off the mountain for good measure. Because of a mini-avalanche right afterwards, they all think Gabe died. Jessie calls in on Hal’s walkie-talkie asking if he’s alright, so Hal has to lie because of the gun pointed at him. He says everything is fine, it was a fake distress call, and they are heading for the nearest shelter. Hearing this, Jessie tells her older co-worker Frank (Ralph Waite) to fly her over to this known shelter where Hal is supposed to be at so she can grab him. She is dropped off and goes straight to the shelter. This when an almost-frozen Gabe appears in a panic. He explains the whole situation to Jessie and tells her to call the police. She tells Gabe that the cold has killed her radio. With it getting dark in an hour, the time to make a move is now or never.

Realizing they have no other options, they decide to take matters into their own hands and go after the next briefcase before the bad guys do and hopefully, save Hal in the process.

My Thoughts:

As awesome as Sylvester Stallone action films are, Sly had some trouble once the 80s were over. He still had some great movies, but audiences weren’t necessarily receptive to all of them like how they used to be. Cliffhanger however, was one of those major hits that was classic Stallone.

It starts off with a bang, with one of the more memorable openings to a film you will ever witness. We see happy-go-lucky Gabe making some cheesy jokes with his friends, going through a normal workday of rescuing people. Right after though, we see him not only fail to save a woman (in what seemed like a routine day), but we see her fall to her gruesome death. This is how you start off a movie! This is how you grab an audience’s attention! As long as you didn’t see the parody of this in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls first, you’ll be fully invested from the get-go. Admittedly, it takes a little while for the action to get going again, but you have to establish all the characters and the basic story. It’s just how the movie world works. I just wish that twenty-to-thirty-minute span was a bit more enticing. Herein lies the first issue with the film. There’s way too much screen time devoted to the in-fighting of the bad guys, especially involving Agent Travers. I know they were trying to add these extra issues because this distraction gives these mountain climbers a chance against ex-military personnel, but I could’ve definitely done without it (or just less of it in general). By the fifth time Kynette (Leon) piped in to threaten someone unnecessarily, I started reacting like Travers. Dude, can you shut the fuck up? What is this man trying to prove? Why is he mad at the fucking world?

Also, I’m not (nor should anyone) be intimidated by Rex Linn, who looks exactly like Dr. Phil. From the beginning, I couldn’t take the vitally important character of Agent Travers seriously because of this casting choice.

What I did enjoy about Stallone’s character here is that he doesn’t have the profession of someone that is prone to fighting/action situations. He’s not a cop. He’s a mountain climber. He even tells Jessie at one point to call the police, hammering this point home. What’s cool about this is that his character is much more vulnerable than the action hero types Stallone usually plays. In Cliffhanger, he takes an ass-beating and rightfully so. He’s facing ex-military guys after all. Stallone doesn’t put us through those ridiculously unbelievable action scenes he usually would because his character doesn’t allow for it. The fight scenes are reasonable too because though Gabe can throw hands, he’s not Rambo. He can try and take these guys in a fight, but Gabe is able to succeed against them in different fighting scenarios because of his survival skills, quick-thinking, and sheer will. This alone should win over non-fans of Stallone. The only somewhat ridiculous action sequence was a fight scene between Gabe and a bad guy where he rides the guy like a snowboard as he’s fighting him down a hill. We know there’s no way this guy would lay perfectly straight the whole time without rolling like crazy in the snow, but it becomes worth it because of the cool ass ending to the sequence when Gabe hangs on to the cliff and the guy falls to his death amongst this black backdrop.

Because of that and the fact this is a Sylvester Stallone action film, it gets a pass in my eyes.

I will say that Gabe should’ve been a bit more distraught after the death of Hal’s girlfriend. I’m not saying his performance wasn’t enough, I’m just saying the character would’ve benefitted more had Stallone acted like he did in D-Tox. This was a lot better representation of someone dealing with guilt. You can see it in Gabe’s eyes here in this movie, but not enough was shown to flesh out what’s going on inside, especially because how insensitive everyone acts towards him. If they saw more of him acting in his depressive state instead of him just leaving the area for almost a year, it would’ve made a much bigger difference. I think taking it in the direction of a film like D-Tox would’ve helped a lot more in establishing the grief and depression he feels following Sarah’s death. Speaking of which, Jessie was kind of a bitch. She’s feels no remorse whatsoever for Gabe’s grief and basically tells him to get over it even though it only happened 8 MONTHS AGO. She even tries to make it about herself, literally saying at one point, “Quit hoarding all the guilt”. This is outrageous human behavior. She’ll never understand the pain of being responsible for someone’s death, so it’s pretty selfish of her to act this way. Not once throughout this film did I think, “Wow, I hope Gabe goes back to her!”.

There are some other minor annoyances as well. There’s two young adult characters that bum around Denver and are not only total morons but horrible actors to boot. It seems like someone from the present told these guys to act like how they would think a 90s pothead would be like. That’s what they tried to do, but it was painfully unconvincing and took way too much screen time away from the action. They should’ve just made one of the characters Pauly Shore. Then, and only then, would the amount of screentime allotted to these characters been worth it. There’s also the fact that throughout most of the movie, Gabe wears nothing more than a pullover throughout this snowy mountain terrain. He doesn’t even have gloves. I understand his coat was taken by the bad guys early on, but they had a chance to add more clothes when they stop at a shelter. What does Gabe do? Well because Stallone has to show off his body for the fans, he adds this comically thin sweater and decides he’s ready to go to war.

Are you kidding me? No hat? No gloves? Nothing?

I understand we have to showcase Sylvester Stallone in all his glory but if you’re making a movie about mountain climbing in Denver, Colorado, you have to be somewhat realistic. The only way you can make this choice work is to double down on the fact he isn’t wearing anything remotely warm for the rest of the movie and have him either shivering or on the verge of frostbite throughout the entirety of the movie. He only looks really cold in one scene, which is odd. I understand “running on adrenaline” is a thing but for that long? That’s kind of hard to buy. Also, I’m still iffy on John Lithgow’s performance as the villain. He was decent at some points, but he needed to be a little more demented to be memorable, or just more violent. I don’t know what exactly was missing, but I wasn’t impressed.

Despite these many problems, Cliffhanger is still a very exciting action film and is arguably one of the better Sylvester Stallone vehicles of the 1990s. Once the action gets going, you’re locked in. Stallone is always great as our action hero, and the snowy mountains give us an exciting backdrop and great obstacle for all the characters involved to try and overcome. In terms of electrifying action movies of this decade, Cliffhanger should be on your list. Along with 127 Hours, this movie is also probably the best film about mountain climbing there is.

However, there isn’t much competition when you compare it to boring ass movies like Everest and The Eiger Sanction.