In praise of Cliffhanger (1993)
It rocks
That trailer is so hilariously overwrought. Love it.
But I digress.
For my last post on Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024), I spent an unhealthy amount of time considering how angry I am by the uselessness and hypocrisy of liberal centrism. It wasn’t a great space to be in if I’m honest. It involved reflecting on how liberalism’s significant and multiple failures have helped facilitate the growing popularity of the far right across the world.
It was pretty depressing.
Being a geriatric millenial cis white male, the only real cure for this was to be swaddled in a warm haze of '90s action films. Specifically, embraced by the ripped guns of Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger.
With Italy’s Dolomites mountains providing standing in for the Rocky Mountains, the movie takes place almost entirely within this stunning landscape. It kicks off with a genuinely intense opening scene, a showcase for what’s to come. Mountain rescuer Gabe (Sylvester Stallone, also co-writing with Michael France) comes the aid of his friend and fellow mountain rescuer Hal (Michael Rooker) who, along with his girlfriend and novice climber Sarah (Michelle Joyner), has got stuck on a mountain top. However, it all goes tragically wrong when Sarah’s harness breaks and she loses her grip on Gabe’s hand, falling to her death.
There is so much to admire about this nailbiting opener. For a start, the Oscar-nominated sound design is brilliant. We hear every creak and crack of the buckle breaking as Sarah’s harness gives way, the mountain rescue helicopter pulsing in the background. The cinematography and editing do a great job too, chopping between urgent close ups and dizzying overhead shots. One of the most impressive visual aspects of Cliffhanger is the balance between close ups and wide shots, giving us an intimate intensity but never losing the awe of the wilderness. Everyone puts in a sterling performance, amping up a real urgency. None more so that Joyner, who is so convincing at being terrified that when the tragedy happens, her character’s death hits like a rock in the bottom of your stomach and she’s only been onscreen a few minutes.
We cut to a few months later. Gabe comes back to their town having been working in Denver, ridden with guilt. He visits his sometime partner Jessie (Janine Turner) who was at the accident. She resents Gabe leaving with such ease. He then visits Hal, who angrily blames Gabe for Sarah’s death.1 While this domestic drama plays out, more action thriller-based matters are afoot. In another gripping sequence, a hijacked plane with $100 million crashes in the mountains, money-filled suitcases tossed across the mountain range. When the criminals kidnap Gabe and Hal to find the suitcases, Gabe must win back everyone’s trust in the only way an early ‘90s Stallone knows how: scampering about in sub-zero temperatures wearing a tight T-shirt and battering bad guys. He’s doing what he does best in this, fleshing out a kind of mid-way point between Arnie and Bruce Willis. Muscle-bound but able to project an affecting vulnerability.2 Michael Rooker and Janine Turner all provide solid support, though Turner’s Jessie is given very little to do apart from shriek when attacked by bats and fall into the trope of asking a man, at least twice, a variation of ‘what do we do now?’ (famously taken apart by Reese Witherspoon).
It’s the villains, led by a splendidly OTT John Lithgow as Eric Qualen3, who have the most fun here. Lithgow affects a very silly English accent which teeters into a mid-Atlantic William F Buckley Jnr when he’s particularly stressed. He relishes ludicrous lines such as “Get off your back? I’m not even on it yet” and “You want to kill me, don’t you? Well take a number and get in line”. He is bloody evil too. Qualan shoots his lover and co-pilot Kristel (Caroline Goodall, in another pretty thankless women’s role with little to do) just to make his own pilot skills indispensable. Richard Travers (Rex Linn) does some great wild-eyed madness as a crooked FBI agent and has a fantastically antagonistic relationship with Qualen. Kynette (Leon) and Delmar (Craig Fairbass) have some tension, which mainly seems to be about Kynette being black and Delmar being a racist white English guy.45 As these frictions escalate, the story fleshes out these villains beyond standard cardboard cut outs. But ultimately, they’re all pretty sadistic and heartless on their way to meeting their inevitable sticky ends.
And, by my punctured lungs, what sticky ends. Portended by Hal’s red smoke distress signal wafting across the snow in the opening scene, the violence has a bloody brutality to it that isn’t often seen in mainstream action cinema. There’s bullet exit wounds like something out of The Wild Bunch. Someone’s impaled on a stalagtite; knees are slashed with mountain climbing equipment; a character beaten half to death before shooting their assailant and chucking them off a cliff; many fall to their deaths. It’s all delivered with ruthless glee.
The interplay between the physical violence and hostility of the mountain landscape is impressively balanced. Harlin is equally capable of handling complex airborne action sequences and closer quarter fight scenes. A use of long shots help us get a grasp of the magnitude of these mountains. There is a greatshot of Gabe climbing a cliffface, which zooms out until he is a tiny speck against the forbidding mountain. 6 A neat trick in Cliffhanger is how it makes such a panorama feel so claustrophobic. So much space and nowhere to go apart from onward.
While sometimes reduced to the elevator pitch of ‘Die Hard on a mountain’, Cliffhanger does something a little different. While it’s nearly impossible to be an action film after Die Hard and escape its influence, particularly in the early ‘90s, Cliffhanger deftly blends survival tropes in with the action. Scarce, dwindling resources and a group of people under strain in unforgiving elements, mixed up with the helicopter explosions and shoot outs, gives the audience a layer of tension that other action movies lack. It’s a smart and seamless genre blend.
Naturally, Cliffhanger is a product of its time. It has silly European villains, a muscle-bound hero with just enough personality to make him nearly three dimensional and women who don’t say very much. But it’s also a movie that sets its bar incredibly high with a riveting opening and for the most part maintains that excitement throughout. It never once feels repetitive. The script and direction exploit the landscape and desperate situation to full effect. It’s a treat of a film well worth revisiting.
“Drop it,” says Gabe. “It was you who dropped it!” retorts Hal, not letting bereavement, rage and trauma get in the way of a solid bit of wordplay.
This vulnerability was used to the full in what is generally considered his best performance in the often-overlooked Copland (1997).
I have a real soft spot for obviously made up movie names.
Delmar also has one of the best lines in the movie, a bit of dialogue that seems to forshadow Nick Love’s gift for juicy English slang: “You’re a loudmouth punk slag who’s about to die”.
Disappointingly, he calls football “soccer”. However, I’ll be charitable and imagine this is so Hal can understand his threats before he kicks him in the face.
Renny Harlin also directed the underrated and snowy Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), and you can see the way in both films he makes the world look cold, unforgiving and stark.