Cliffhanger

365 Films

Entry #20

Cliffhanger (1993)

Directed by: Renny Harlin

I’ll try to make this short and sweet because I really don’t have that much to say about Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone’s mountain climber-rescue-action movie Cliffhanger.  I don’t mean to disparage the film but this is definitely one of those entries wherein the entire concept of doing this blog in the first place backfires.  I’m including it because if I wish to present the entirety of my cinematic education, I have to show it as it happened, the warts and all truth.  When you are an aspiring, young cinephile, the most treasured of all your possessions is your family’s video-store rental membership card.  It’s astonishing that in such a short amount of time those elusive, idol-like objects have all but gone extinct.  My point is that when you rely on the video store as heavily as my family did, you tend to get lazy in your selections.  Why would I want to explore and seek out new and interesting directors when there is Sylvester Stallone’s face staring at me with his dead eyes as he dangles precariously over a snow-white frozen abyss?  The movie is called Cliffhanger and literally, there is a guy hanging from a cliff on the box for the videotape.  How could I resist?  That’s how it went for several weekends in our house, A trip to the video store led to the two day acquisition of Cliffhanger, followed by copious amounts of watching of Cliffhanger, culminating in the ultimate return of Cliffhanger to its home at West Coast Video.  This went on for several weekends.  It got even worse when a blizzard caused a pipe in our school to freeze and subsequently burst.  A couple of weeks off of school and unlimited time to watch Cliffhanger definitely add up to several million-brain cells killed instantly.  What’s funny about all this is whenever Cliffhanger pops up on cable these days (I do own the DVD but it’s back on the east coast, so Mom, feel free to watch that whenever you want), I’m always willing to set aside a few hours to see how Gabe Walker will salvage the one-hundred-million dollars in uncirculated treasury bills while foiling the evil schemes of former military intelligence officer Eric Qualen and ruthless gang of criminals.  All the while struggling to stay alive in an incredibly harsh and perilous region of the Rocky Mountains.  As far as action movies go, it’s an incredibly well oiled machine that serves no purpose other than to hold you tight in its vice-like grip.  Director Renny Harlin succeeds at this in remarkable fashion.  He brings a sharp-eye to pretty standard material and is inventive and clever enough in his action staging to never let the monotony of the story and setting overwhelm the experience.  The subsequent decade of Nate and I endlessly quoting the film’s most price-less lines say something about the screenplay.  What that is, I can’t be entirely certain, but it’s something.  And the trailer is pretty fuckin' awesome.