By Geno McGahee
In 1988, the action landscape changed with the release of DIE HARD. The idea of one guy taking on a group of terrorists was really appealing and Hollywood took notice of the trend, putting out films with Steven Seagal in UNDER SIEGE, Jean-Claude Van Damme in SUDDEN DEATH and in 1993, Sly Stallone had his in CLIFFHANGER.
Gabe (Stallone) is the man when it comes to rock climbing. We begin with his buddy, Hal (Michael Rooker) and his girlfriend trapped on some rocks. Gabe climbs up the entire face of the rock to rescue, met by Frank (Ralph Waite) and Jessie (Janine Turner), Gabe’s girl. They tie down a wire and land the chopper, making a pathway for the rescue, but as the Hal’s girl makes her way across, her harness gives and she begins to slip. Gabe tries to rescue her, but she drops to her death.
A year passes and Gabe returns to meet up with Jessie, trying to convince her to leave the rock-rescue world. That had to be strange to stay away for a full year without showing up at all. What was he doing all that time and what has Jessie been doing? I don’t think she was banging Frank. He’s too old and this was before Viagra really got popular, I think. I feel bad for Gabe. All that guilt with the death probably made it impossible for him to jerk off.
As Gabe tries to drop the guilt and move on with his life, Travers (Rex Linn), an FBI agent, is on a plane with 100 million dollars in cash. He kills all the other FBI guys and joins up with Qualen (John Lithgow) and his group of bad guys, but they lose the cash as it drops from the plane and onto the rocks. Now this group must land and track down the suitcases of cash and try to complete this evil mission.
I like John Lithgow. He’s really good and I looked forward to seeing him as an evil crazy guy and he was awesome in this, but I found it pretty funny that they gave him such a bad accent. Bad guys are scary if they have accents. It brings that level of mystery. There aren’t that many DIE HARD-influenced action films that have don’t have terrorist group leaders without a bad accent.
The plane with the bad guys crashes and leaves them stranded. They call for the rescue and Gabe and Hal respond, but there’s a lot of tension. Despite Gabe trying to save Hal’s girl, he was never forgiven. I think that Hal may have been upset that Gabe didn’t get him a Christmas gift or a birthday gift. Remember, Gabe was gone for a year. Hell, they could have had a “guy’s night” where they sat together, drank, and watched football or even strange porn films. Hal missed that and when you add his dead girlfriend, you got one fucking pissed off former best friend, possibly with benefits.
Qualen and his group kidnap Hal and Gabe and insist that they help them find the money. They reluctantly agree. They send Gabe up the mountain to retrieve the first suitcase, but they take his coat first. That didn’t make a lot of sense until you realize that this film was co-written by Sly Stallone. He wanted the audience to see his killer physique and I can’t blame him. If I was muscle bound like Sly, I’d insist on showing it off to everyone.
Gabe reaches the first suitcase and before he can bring it down, they start shooting at him. He throws the money down and the shooting starts an avalanche. Qualen watches as the first third of the take coast down the mountain. The 100 million take was now 66 million and they pissed off Gabe. He is now in the race to reach them first and destroy the cash.
Gabe meets up with Jessie and she joins the battle after the bad guys. Qualen and Travers begin to implode under the pressure. I don’t know why Travers would team up with Qualen to begin with. We learn later from other investigators that Qualen had serious mental issues and was basically insane. Travers had to know that Qualen would eventually kill him and not honor the 50/50 split deal. He should have worked with other crooked FBI guys and this would have been smooth and he’d be sitting on the beach with a bunch of hot babes or dudes, whatever his fancy is. Instead, he’s traveling through the freezing cold, climbing rocks and getting outsmarted by Gabe.
The bad guys start going after Gabe, individually, and the odds start to even. Hal is also stuck with the group and taking them around the long way to give his old friend the chance to get to the cases first. Getting to the second case, Gabe burns all the money and now we are down to 33 million. Now, there is no way that Qualen gives any of his crew any of this remainder, if he can get his hands on it.
Travers is getting angrier by the minute and is now on the trail of Gabe, while telling Qualen to fuck off over the radio. He knows he has lost but he wants to kill Gabe to at least get some satisfaction out of it. As you probably guessed, it didn’t go well. Travers dies a terrible death, getting shot and then drowning. I wonder what he focused more on, the drowning or the bleeding to death as he was under water. Then again, he was under ice as well and that had to be scary. He probably had a lot of thoughts at that time and none of them good.
We lead to the one on one showdown with Gabe and Qualen and the outcome is no shocker. It’d be strange for Qualen to win at the end. Gabe and Hal make up and Jessie is going to become Gabe’s girl again, unless he trots his muscular ass out of her life for a year again. I’m guessing she would find a new dude if he did that. She can’t go through another year of batteries.
CLIFFHANGER is a good film. It’s not as good as DIE HARD or even UNDER SIEGE, but for Stallone, this was a good attempt to make a terrorist versus one guy sort of movie. I recommend it.
