In short: Cliffhanger (1993)

This is neither a particular highpoint in the career of America’s second best mainstream action movie director of its era, Renny Harlin, nor of its lead, the sometimes redoubtable Sylvester Stallone.

Whenever the film about a tough free-climbing mountain rescue manly man fighting gangsters led by John Lithgow making an hilarious attempt at what I assume is supposed to be an English upper class accent (though I could be wrong) actually concentrates on tight action sequences cleverly filmed to produce vertigo in its audience, it becomes downright riveting. Plus, Cliffhanger teaches one quite a bit about all the ways gravity can kill you (and that in a genre and film that has a rather dubious grasp on gravity and all other laws of physics you might care to mention, treating them more as suggestions of physics than strict laws), and warns of the dozens of ways a manly man mountain rescue dude can kill you with whatever objects or natural features are available at any given moment. It also relates the tragically tragic tale of Sly getting his best bud Michael Rooker rather miffed at him via a very tragic girlfriend dropping into an abyss incident, and warns of the dangers of teaming up with Evil John Lithgow.

However, the film leaves these natural roaming places of the US action movie a little too often. An obvious example is the introduction of two extreme sports dudes that make Beavis and Butthead look downright realistic only to get them killed later on in scenes that mostly seem to be in the film to make it lose momentum (which is totally what you want in your big dumb action movie), awakening my inner editor rather fiercely.


It’s a bit of a shame, really, for a twenty minute shorter version of Cliffhanger would probably have turned it into the nail biter its title promises instead of the decent enough action flick with only mildly interesting idiocy it is.