Summer of ‘93: 'Cliffhanger'

Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone deliver one of the better ‘Die Hard’ knock-offs.

In the wake of Die Hard, Hollywood quickly tried to replicate its genre-defining success. Within a decade of its release, audiences were treated to “Die Hard on a boat” (Under Siege), “Die Hard on a plane” (Air Force One AND Passenger 57), and “Die Hard at Alcatraz” (The Rock). The machine hasn’t quite stopped – the 2010s gave us two versions of “Die Hard at the White House” and the snake ate its own tail with 2018’s Skyscraper, which is, yes, “Die Hard in a building.”

I hadn’t seen Cliffhanger, which opened the summer 1993 movie season, since shortly after its release and, to be honest, I didn’t remember it as a take on Die Hard at all. In my memory, the Sylvester Stallone actioner was more of a survival thriller, with bad guys as a threat in addition to the perils of nature. Watching it again, I’m not sure how I missed it (a fair point might be that it’s possible I hadn’t seen Die Hard in 1993). 

In actuality, Cliffhanger is one of the biggest, dumbest and most blatant of the Die Hard clones, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s also one of the most entertaining. Par for the course with most Stallone films of the era, it’s big on bombast and short on brains, but balanced with action sequences that might be even more impressive at a time when CGI has replaced anything tactile. 

Stallone stars as Gabe Walker, a ranger in the Rocky Mountains who’s been away for nearly a year following a professional tragedy. He returns to make things right with his girlfriend, Jessie (Janine Turner), and his best friend Hal (Michael Rooker), who blames Gabe for the climbing death of his girlfriend. But Gabe’s return coincides with a bungled heist, in which a gang of thieves led by Eric Qualen (John Lithgow) have crashed a plane full of stolen cash in the mountains. They pose as stranded hikers until Gabe and Hal find them, and then force them to navigate the treacherous environment and find the cash. Gabe, of course, takes matters into his own hands, waging a one-man war 

Mountain man 

The appeal of Die Hard was not in its over-the-top action sequences – although it is, of course, a bone-rattling adventure – but in how it subverted what was then the norm in ‘80s action movies. The film spends a great deal of time skewering machismo, and John McClane is an everyman who gets hurt and bleeds, a refreshing twist from the supermen played by Stallone and Schwarzenegger, both of whom are name checked in Die Hard. 

Cliffhanger is a Die Hard riff with a main character who is no Everyman. Stallone leans on his iconic physique, towering over his co-stars and given an excuse to remove his sweater in sub-zero temperatures to put his muscles on full display. For about 15 minutes, Gabe dutifully plays the captive, but it’s not long before he’s running through the woods, tricking the villains, engaging in fistfights and shootouts. Because the majority of the villains look like, well, John Lithgow, there’s never much question who’s going to come out on top, particularly when Gabe impales one henchman a stalactite with his bare hands. 

Stallone can be a great actor, but I actually find him less interesting when he’s just playing the hero. PTSD-addled John Rambo is interesting in First Blood; he’s a cartoon in the sequels. Rocky Balboa, his best role, is most fascinating when he’s a down-on-his-luck palooka, but less effective when he’s on top of the world. Gabe has a few one-liners, but Stallone lacks the wit and timing of Schwarzenegger or Willis. He can do comedy, action and drama, but he can’t exactly chew gum and walk at the same time. He’s fun to watch in the action sequences, but doesn’t really nail the heartbreak and guilt Gabe feels in the film’s first half, and the film largely drops the tragic backstory once the plot is set into motion. 

But Stallone’s the best performance in the film, if only because Cliffhanger gets so much mileage out of sequences of him running, climbing, fighting and shooting, and Stallone is a very effective physical performer. He’s not given much help from Turner, whose delivery is wooden and whiny in too many places, although Rooker is effective as the scrappy friend who gets his own opportunity to take on the bad guys (had Rooker been the star, this could have been an even more effective use of the Die Hard formula). Most everyone else is cannon fodder. 

Lithgow gives one of the most frustrating co-lead performances I’ve seen in these films. I like Lithgow. He can do drama and comedy, and he’s played effective villains. He snarls menacingly as Qualen, and the script gives him a few sinister turns (cold-bloodedly shooting one of his henchmen, in particular). But, in what appears to be a desire to draw associations to Alan Rickman’s Die Hard performance, the film depicts Qualen as a British thief, and the actor’s accent is one of the worst I’ve heard. It sounds fake throughout, and it inhibits Lithgow’s performance. I can envision the actor portraying a smart and cold intellectual threat to Stallone’s red-blooded hero, but the performance here is too rigid, and Lithgow doesn’t imbue Qualen with any of the charm that made Rickman’s Hans Gruber so memorable, although he does hold his own in a climactic brawl with Gabe on a dangling helicopter. 

Hang on

Cliffhanger has flaws, but it’s a hell of a ride.  

Much of that is due to Harlin. If you’re going to rip off Die Hard, who better to do direct than someone who already helmed one of its sequels? Harlin was just coming off Die Hard 2, and it seems like he was eager to return to the formula (before Cliffhanger was developed, he was looking to do it as a Die Hard takeoff set during a hurricane). While I personally would have loved to see what John McTiernan could have done with this movie, mixing his Die Hard action sensibilities with Predator’s survival thriller, few directors are as adept at making stupidity so spectacular as Harlin, and this might be his best film.

The film’s opening scene, which was relentlessly parodied in the years following, is easily its high point. Set eight months before the story proper, it showcases the tragic rescue mission in which Gabe could not save Hal’s girlfriend. As Gabe struggles to save the woman hundreds of feet in the air, Harlin and editor Frank Urioste ratchet up the tension to near unbearably levels. It’s a taut, vertiginous sequence; even though I knew it was coming, the moment when the woman’s hand slips out of Stallone’s still drew a gasp. It’s a perfectly paced action sequence that the film never quite matches. 

In an age where all of our action movies seem to be shot on the Volume or created in a computer, I always find it refreshing to watch movies shot on location and using practical stunts and effects. With Jurassic Park just weeks away from ushering in the digital revolution started by James Cameron, Cliffhanger feels like one of the last big stunt spectaculars. The film’s heist takes place between two planes and, at the time, set a record for the costliest aerial stunt ever filmed, placing stuntman Simon Crane 15,000 feet in the air. It’s a thrilling sequence, reminiscent of what Chris Nolan would later do in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight Rises. 

Harlin proved with Die Hard 2 that he was no slouch when it came to action sequences, and Cliffhanger is peppered with brutal fist fights, tense shootouts and narrow escapes. Much of the film was shot on location, which lends immediacy and its own visceral nature, even if several of the close-up sequences and climbing shots for Stallone were shot on soundstages or with doubles (the actor apparently had a problem with heights). The film gains a great deal from the large vistas, snow-swept landscapes and dizzying heights, and even if it’s a bit dunder-headed, Harlin moves things at a fast clip and keeps it from ever being boring. 

Cliffhanger was a huge hit, bringing in more than $200 million at the global box office at a time when R-rated action fare could do regularly do that. Watching it again was a nice reminder of when summer movies could be spectacular while keeping at least one toe in reality, and stand alone without the pressures of backing an elaborate franchise. 

That said, Stallone has been trying to get a Cliffhanger sequel off the ground for a while, and last month it was announced that he might be dusting off Gabe’s sweater one last time. And while I can’t say I was itching for more adventures with the character – even watching it again, I didn’t really feel disappointed that Cliffhanger 2 wasn’t sitting there for me to watch – Stallone has good history with belated sequels and reboots, and if they can build on the visceral feel of the first film, I’d gladly watch him suit up again.