When Rambo takes on mountains and killers in the same breath, you can sit back and let him hang on for a good two hours of Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger. The action adventure hit from 1993 presents Sylvester Stallone in one of his more realistic roles (to say) than his one-man army missions before and after it.
Stallone plays Gabe Walker who is part of a mountain rescue team along with Hal (Michael Rooker) and Jessie (Janine Turner). Giving up on his work after failing to save Hal’s girlfriend during a rescue operation, Gabe agrees to partner up with Hal one last time to a rescue without knowing that an organized crime gang led by former British intel Eric Qualen (John Lithgow) made the fake call to take them hostages and track the $100 million in robbed money lost in the snowy mountains.
Cliffhanger would be just another action thriller with Stallone in a good vs bad guys story if it wasn’t for the setting and sound. Harlin appears successful in delivering the full experience of both with eye-capturing cinematography matching pitch-perfect sound effects. Though the dialogue isn’t memorable, the action scenes get their gripping effect primarily by the sound quality. The backstory to Gabe’s conflict helps a bit in fleshing out Stallone’s character. It is notable though that Qualen gets more bad-ass lines than anyone in the story.
What Cliffhanger suffers from most is repetition – every quarter of an hour or so you get to see the same sequence replayed with different characters and somewhat same lines; the another-one-taken pattern continues throughout the movie and makes it feel longer. On the whole, it’s not a bad pick for retro action fans and for those who appreciate the absence of clichéd romance. Ending with the hero and his girl sharing a hug on a mountain top is a breath of fresh air against the clichéd ending kiss.
