CLIFFHANGER (1993)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Sylvester Stallone has had a wayward career when it comes to action flicks. He never got beyond action thrillers like some of his contemporaries did, such as Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis. Stallone has never proven to be a solid actor though he does have oodles of charisma. For every "Rambo" and "Rocky" picture, there was a "Rhinestone" or a "Over the Top" or even worse, "Stop! Or My Mom will Shoot." In 1993, Stallone made a brief resurgence in the mainstream with the occasionally effective and downright preposterous "Cliffhanger," a movie that is so completely implausible that you simply have to give up logic and go full speed ahead with it.
Stallone is Gabe Walker, a superhuman rock climber who is part of a rescue mission to help stranded folk who get caught in areas deep in the mountains. At the start of the film, there is Gabe's buddy, Hal (Michael Rooker) and his girlfriend, the latter who gets her hooks unfastened while suspended on a rope between two cliffs and falls to her death. Gabe tried to save her but failed, though it wasn't his fault. Meanwhile, a few treasury agents get mixed up in a plot with a nefarious madman (the always scenery-chewing John Lithgow) to steal millions in cash from a U.S. Treasury plane by using a wire rope extended from their own plane! Naturally, a few people get killed, their plane careens out of control through some thick brush, and the villains end up in the mountains with suitcases of cash stuck somewhere in the snowy pikes. Guess who is going to accompany the villains on their mission to find the cash? Why Gabe and his buddy Hal, of course, but they are having a tough time getting over their past history over a certain girl's death.
You want action and you got it in "Cliffhanger." There are several chases through the snowy hills, extensive climbing, lots of shootings, lots of fireballs, a cave full of bats, icy caverns, etc. But there is also a general sense of nastiness and plenty of gore. We get several beatings in the film with punches and kicks so curiously amplified in digital sound that you wonder how nobody ever breaks a bone in their body. There is a scene in icy waters where a barechested Stallone is underwater and manages to shoot the bad guy. Someone even gets impaled on a stalactite - that's an inventive killing method. There are even two scenes where bullets are fired from a machine gun yet they are not heard - some operatic music plays on the soundtrack instead. But the heavy gore and reliance on pure meanness leaves a bad taste.
I shouldn't leave out Janine Turner as Jessie, another rock climber who loves Gabe. Turner is so unconvincing as his love interest, however, that whatever magical spark existed in "Northern Exposure" is missing here. I will say that, outside of Talia Shire, Stallone has never convinced me to be any woman's dream come true so that may be partially his fault.
As directed by Renny Harlin, "Cliffhanger" is still marginally effective as a "Die Hard" clone but it lacks a compelling hero. Stallone has the stuff of an action hero but he is more muted and expressionless than usual. And scenes where he is forced to climb those rocks wearing nothing but a T-shirt in zero-below weather really strains credibility - by the looks of it, Gabe would've suffered from hypothermia and have died. But then we wouldn't have a movie.
