Cliffhanger

Introduction

Cliffhanger arrived at a timely juncture in Sylvester Stallone's career; the Rocky and Rambo franchises had (at the time) finished and he was coming off the back of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Oscar so when Renny Harlin came to him with the screenplay of Cliffhanger, it was surprising that he initially turned Harlin down. After some persuasion he got on board and agreed to play the lead role of Gabe Walker and take part in rewriting the screenplay.


Walker is a member of the mountain rescue team based in the Colorado Rockies who loses his nerve when a rescue the rescue attempt goes wrong and his best friends girlfriend plummets to her death, with Hal Tucker (Michael Rooker) holding him responsible. A year later, Walker returns to ask his girlfriend Jessie (Janine Turner) to move away with him but she refuses and, before he can leave, his expertise is needed in a rescue mission.

The rescue call came from a criminal gang, led by Qualen (John Lithgow) whose attempted midair theft of $100 million from a US Treasury plane has gone wrong, leaving them stranded in the mountains and the cases of money scattered around the area. Walker and Tucker, whilst still not the best of friends, put aside their differences and track down the stranded party only to be kidnapped by Qualen who uses their knowledge of the region to recover the money.

Video

The 1080p picture showcases the splendid photography of the Italian Alps, with Harlin doing a sterling job of filming in such inhospitable conditions. The picture is largely free of noise and looks stunning for a 15 year old film but such clarity is a double edged sword as the scenes shot on a soundstage are obviously fake and the blood has an odd orange hue which was not previously noticeable on VHS or DVD.

*The pictures contained in this review are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the image quality of the disc.*

Audio

You have a choice between DTS HD Master or Dolby Digital 5.1 English soundtracks, both of which do a good job of presenting the soundstage. The surround speakers are used well with helicopter rotor blades, gunfire, wind and other atmospherics coming from all directions and involving you in the film. Trevor Jones' score is perfect for this kind of movie, suitably stirring and emotive. Of the two options the DTS has the edge with much more bass and packs a bigger punch than the Dolby surround track.


Sadly and inexplicably there are no subtitles on the this Blu-ray disc - an omission made all the more puzzling by their inclusion on the 2001 Momentum DVD release and the greater storage capacity of a BD.

Extra Features
The first thing of note is that this is the uncut version of Cliffhanger, with the BBFC waiving the previous 1:31 minutes of cuts to the fight scenes.

The extra features are exactly the same as those on previous releases, also presented in SD (576p), which has the hidden benefit of showing the improvement of the HD picture over DVD.


First off is the commentary by Renny Harlin (to be found in the Audio options) who is 'joined' by Sly in an informative but far from gripping commentary. They were obviously recorded separately and edited together but complement each other well, with Harlin talking about filming and the more technical aspects and Sly reminiscing about the shoot and giving an actors perspective.

The introduction by Renny Harlin is only available separately and would have made much more sense running automatically before the main feature but is an interesting five minute preface to the film, intercut with interview footage from Stallone and Janine Turner, by the Finnish director.

Stallone on the Edge: The Making Of "Cliffhanger" is a satisfactory 20 minute behind the scenes package showing the conditions under which they filmed and features interviews with Harlin and the main cast. It is 'hosted' by Stallone in his Demolition Man costume and is fairly cheesy, but hey, it's Stallone! The Additional Making Of Featurette is your typical EPK guff and features much of the material from the main 'Making Of' so is pretty much unnecessary.


The interviews with Sylvester Stallone, Renny Harlin, Janine Turner, John Lithgow and Michael Rooker are again mostly covered in the 'Stallone on the Edge' piece with only a few seconds of extra material but these are badly put together with the questions (partly) edited out so you get the first few lines of a follow up question before it jumps straight to an answer.

The deleted scenes are introduced by Renny Harlin who explains why they were omitted - the film isn't any the worse for their loss.

The Special Effects section shows you how the main effects were done and is worth a watch; there are three storyboard comparisons: air to air transfer, helicopter explosion and Sarah's fall - these show you how the finished film differs from the storyboard with the scenes running under the storyboards.

There are also three trailers and five TV spots which are notable only because the trailers contain footage that was cut from the finished film.

Conclusion

Cliffhanger is overblown, silly and preposterous but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. Sylvester Stallone plays Rocky in the Rockies, full of inner angst and generally moody but not averse to the odd quip or witticism. As the 'bad guy who the good guy is going to take down in the last reel', John Lithgow obviously had a great time chewing the scenery as a true pantomime villain - it's clear that he wouldn't last 5 minutes with Stallone's Walker so, wisely, when the two go mano-a-mano Harlin makes sure that he doesn't. Surrounding Quelan with an evil girlfriend, a bent cop and a bevy of 'rent-a-goons' to be shouted at in a rather amusing fashion provides Lithgow plenty of excuses to be good at being bad and his delivery of "Walker, you bastard!" is very funny.

Sly had two prolific periods in his career: the first provided the Rocky and Rambo films (numbers 1-5 and 1-3 respectively) and the second starting with Cliffhanger and ending with Copland, though both contained their fair share of duds.

Renny Harlin is a director for whom I have very little respect - what he did with Exorcist: The Beginning was unforgivable - but he does know how to make formulaic popcorn fluff such as Die Hard 2 and Deep Blue Sea. Cliffhanger is probably Harlin's best film though Die Hard 2 comes close and if you don't already own this on DVD (and even if you do) this Blu-ray Disc has enough in the way of audio and visual improvement to warrant a purchase.