Review of Cliffhanger (Special Edition)

Introduction

Cliffhanger came out in 1993 and marked the return of Sylvester Stallone to action films after limited success with Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and came 3 years after his final portrayal of Rocky. Stallone built on the success of the film with more action movies, including Demolition Man, The Specialist, Judge Dredd, Assassins and Daylight before moving to the more serious role he played in CopLand.

Cliffhanger is set in spectacular mountains where Stallone and Rooker play the parts of two mountain rescuers, called out after an air crash only to discover that the call was fake and the culprits want them to help retrieve $100m of stolen currency that fell out of the plane before it crashed.

Video

The video is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and is of a good standard throughout the film – although it is not as crisp as other recent releases.

The scenery is superb and if you watch the making-of featurettes on the disc you will note that many of the scenes were shot on location, giving the movie an authentic feel, however, for the scenes done elsewhere, the back projection is a real let-down and certainly not up to the standard of current films.

Also, another amusement is the ludicrous running-jump that Stallone performs during the movie!

Audio

Sound comes courtesy of a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix which is use to good effect throughout. All channels are used for wind effects, gunshots, helicopter flypasts, explosions and the film’s score. Dialogue is clear and understandable throughout.

Features

Reading the back of the packaging, you would no doubt be excited by the extras, however, they really are not particularly exciting.

Aside from the two trailers, there is a making-of, which is nothing more than an extended 8 minute trailer with the usual inane interviews and little else of interest. The behind the scenes had promise, but I was astonished when it ended after just 4 and a half minutes. The interviews are 10 second sound bites separate by two seconds of blank screen – clearly taken from cuts of the two featurettes and are not at all interesting.

There’s also a photo gallery.

Conclusion

The real star of Cliffhanger is the spectacular scenery which turns a fairly unoriginal plot and unexciting acting into a enjoyable film - there’s non-stop action and some hair-raising mountain antics.

The visuals are above average, but not as good as they could be, the sound is pretty good and the extras promised much but delivered little

The real irritation is that the Region 1 special edition includes better extras and audio commentaries, storyboards and other material not included on the Region 2 release.