Post by ronnierocketago on Dec 8, 2009 2:37:57 GMT
CLIFFHANGER (1993) - ***1/2
In retrospect, a movie like CLIFFHANGER is more remarkable and admirably archaic in these days of SKY CAPTAIN and 300 where with complete digital green screens, computers can draw and simulate any environment, object, and even people. But CLIFFHANGER was shot when computers weren't thar advanced yet and when Hollywood wanted to set an actioneer set on a mountain, they actually went to a friggin mountain and performed some stunts. Sure alot of mattes and rear screen projection cheating was used, but there is some legit gratification in seeing actors and stuntmen (you know. real people) actually climb a steep rock face with bare hands, be sitting comfortably on a narrow unsteady peak, commit ridiculous jumps off cliffs, and so forth.
CLIFFHANGER wouldn't be produced like this today. Why bother with the pain in the ass technical and financial hassles of shooting on location, nevermind the potentially crippling and lethal stunts, when keyboards save them the trouble? There is a great moment in CLIFFHANGER where one of the hijackers aerial transfered himself by cable from one airplane to another. I thought it was a nice special effect (like AIR FORCE ONE), until I learned it wasn't. Former 007 Stuntman and coordinator Simon Crane got paid a Guinness-record $1 million to pull off that fucking insane stunt in mid-air. If he had botched this and fell, he would have plummeted 15,000 feet to his death. Absolute badass.
We accept computer wizardry so much for granted, maybe Roger Ebert was right when he opined in a column that there is no longer magic at the movies where we wondered how this FX and that stunt was done. Consider Roland Emmerich's latest retarded blockbuster 2012. You have Oscar-worthy detailed and expensive CGI, but was any single frame ever curious? CLIFFHANGER is equally ridiculous and silly, but you never assume that some nerd technician simply planted Stallone on a mountain, or draw Crane and his awesome ballsy stunt. Thus save for dedicated holdouts like Tony Jaa and his crazy Thailand martial arts industry, the movie stunt unfortunately is a dying art. Or is it? You tell me.
Anyway, CLIFFHANGER has a good memorable opening. Interestingly, I still have a hard time taking this sequence seriously because as a kid, I saw (the shitty) ACE VENTURE: WHEN NATURE CALLS before CLIFFHANGER, and ACE parodied that whole scene by replacing Stallone trying and failing to save Michael Rooker's girlfriend with Jim Carrey. And a raccoon. It's technically a good scene yet I can't help but giggle.
I do dig that tragedy was probably Stallone's fault. Yes her line breaks and she's hanging over a ravine by her fingertips, she didn't have time for help so Stallone goes into action hero mode and has good intentions. He's Rocky and Rambo, how can he fail? But his weight (perhaps?) caused her to fall. Then again, if he didn't try and she fell, wouldn't he still feel rotten? Damned if you do, damned if you don't, that sorta thing. In the past I've criticized Stallone the screenwriter (he shares credit on CLIFFHANGER) with going too generic and conviently lame but this works. I especially like how a year later, Sly's co-workers hate him. Not for the accident, but his continuing self-pity. With movies today where emo young men are supposed to be whiney bitches. CLIFFHANGER is sorta refreshing.
But CLIFFHANGER isn't a Lifetime Movie of the Week. From DIE HARD 2 director Renny Harlin, back before CUTTHROAT ISLAND and when Hollywood respected him a little. Funny irony is that he and Stallone were supposed originally to make GALE FORCE, another DIE HARD vehicle Set in a hurricane. My friends we missed out on a winner. Harlin quit because he called it "too much" a DIE HARD clone. Because his 12 ROUNDS is also not a remake of DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE. No sir.
He goes creative and independent by applying the DIE HARD template instead on a mountain. You know what that means. Criminals led by a terrific respected actor (John Lithgow) chewing up the villain scenery pull off a flawlessly-planned heist, except when it goes to shit. In this case stealing millions of U.S. Treasury bills in flight. and crash land in the same mountains where the still-moping Stallone and still-angry Rooker are climbing. The cash crates are scattered. They capture Rooker to make him lead them to the money, Sly must save the day, and he may or may not reconcile with his buddy, may or may not hook up again with his love interest, and Lithgow may or may not die in a fireball. I won't spoil.
Like DIE HARD 2 and 12 ROUNDS, Harlin makes much of CLIFFHANGER entertaning and watchable, if not creative or unique enough to be undisposable. Except in this case, we get two special holy shit moments that makes CLIFFHANGER recommendable and probably Harlin's best effort. Which is like saying you're not as dumb as the last President, or ramble as much as the current one but it's something.
First you have this ice cave fight scene and bloodied-up Sly picks up above his shoulders a goon. Yeah yeah, you expect him to throw him onto a rock spike or something. Nope, he powerlifts him onto a stalacite, and the corpse stays on the ceiling. Second, Sly in a brawl somehow ends up using another terrorist as a sled. If that isn't absurdly good enough, Stallone then takes an ice axe out of his belt and with good editing, you assume he's going for the kill. Instead, Sly buries the axe to stay on the cliff as said human sled flies off. The career of Stallone, once the world's biggest movie star, began to decline in the 1990s but CLIFFHANGER was one of his few genuine hits at the time. If he's desperate, I guess we'll soon get CLIFFHANGER 2.
Lithgow does what he can with another run-of-the-mill generic supersmart/superegomaniac baddie you would expext in such movies with the usual villain speeches, yet another great thespian aping Hans Gruber just like Gary Oldman, Powers Boothe, Jeremy Irons, Tommy Lee Jones and countless others. For some random reason Lithgow sports a slight British accent. Mate we think you're already an arrogant snobby bastard without the tongue, you don't need help. Besides you obviously have a good dental plan. He does have one good scene where one of his men tries to take over by gunpoint and plans to kill him. Lithgow quickly kills the group pilot, and becomes the leader again because now he's the only one that could fly the helicopter. Good motivation.
I liked CLIFFHANGER, I enjoyed the experience in spite of the nonsense one has to sit through. Looking back, why does Lithgow need 10 people for his operation if it went according to plan? Then you realize Sly needed some people to kill in the meantime. You have random B.A.S.E. jumpers with a surfer mentality, like they accidentally came over from POINT BREAK. Harlin has a nice moment when they're killed to a classical music soundtrack, but then repeats same said trick later and just comes off as pretentious wankery. Nevermind Stallone getting supplies by breaking the display cases from a museum that somebody built on the side of a mountain, and decades-old rope still sturdy and dependable. Sure.
That said, whether one like CLIFFHANGER or not, you have to appreciate that Rooker gets casted as a good guy. A great actor typecasted by his evil title character in the masterpiece HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, it is truely nice to see Rooker not be a villain or creep for once. I wish this isn't so much a rare occurence, but I'll take what I can get.