"Cliffhanger" 4K Review

It's early-Ninties action movie night at Xanadu and kicking things off is Renny Harlin's best film, 1993's Cliffhanger, which was more or less "Die Hard on a mountain." It's been 8-1/2 years(!) since we've watched it on Blu-ray (never posted a review) and a few days shy of 15 years(!!) since watching it on a so-so DVD along with the missus's fave, Vertical Limit, as a New Year's Day double feature which got reviewed here. I bought it on iTunes in 4K 6-1/2 years ago, so it's time to give it a look and listen.

 For those unfamiliar with the plot, Sylvester Stallone plays Gabe, a mountain ranger haunted by a harrowing accident which resulted in the death of the girlfriend of his best friend and fellow ranger, Hal (Michael Rooker). He quits the job, but comes back all mopey and emo to try and convince his girlfriend, Jessie (a luscious Janine Turner), a rescue chopper pilot, to leave the park to come with him to Denver.

Meanwhile, in the skies over the park a daring midair hijacking of $100 million in uncirculated bills in three big suitcases being transported from the Denver Mint to San Francisco has gone awry with the jet being flown by the robbers crashing into the park and the cases scattered across the mountains. The gang's leader, Qualen (John Lithgow), has a tracking device to locate the cases, but needs a guide to lead the gang to them, so they make a bogus distress call about hikers lost in the storm with one going into insulin shock.

The weather is too poor for Jessie to fly the chopper, so Hal sets out to find the "hikers." Gabe wants no part of climbing anymore, protesting he doesn't have the touch, but Jessie convinces him to assist even though Hal hates Gabe for the accident. When the pair find the airplane, they also discover what's really happening: They're being used to find the money cases after which they'll obviously be eliminated. Naturally, Gabe is able to escape the group and the rest of the movie is him and Jessie racing to find the money before Qualen's gang, picking off members, while also trying to keep Hal alive.

Cliffhanger works because Harlin keeps his foot on the gas the whole time, only letting up for brief breathers. Filmed in Italy's Dolomites (standing in for the Rockies) with big practical stunts and explosions including the Guinness World Record for the most paid a stuntman ($1M) to perform the midair plane transfer gag, it gives the action a heft that's often missing these days.

It also benefits from a solid script rewritten by Stallone to set up the characters of Gabe, Hal, and Jessie in the aftermath of the accident. Gabe blames himself for not being able to save Hal's girlfriend, but as Jessie tries to remind him she wasn't experienced enough for the climb Hal took her on. Hal blames Gabe, but has to know he perpetuated the situation that ended in tragedy.

But while the script beefs up the motivations on the good guy side, the villains remain cartoons especially Lithgow's Qualen who sports an accent miles away from the coast of England in the ocean somewhere. If he was hoping for a Hans Gruber moment, it didn't happen. Thankfully, it doesn't fall into the endless quippy mode of lesser James Bond and especially Ahnuld action flicks. The biggest laugh is when Gabe is burning the money to keep Jessie and him warm in a cave, "It costs a fortune to heat this place." Zing!

While the action is mostly practical, it's not always realistic like the boots they're wearing aren't what climbers wear (except in the opening scene), the bolt gun not being a real thing, and how Gabe doesn't die of hypothermia despite sometimes being down to a t-shirt in the cold. Yes, he is really shivering in one scene, but let's be real. Minor technical quibble: Digital wire removal was in its infancy so there are a few shots where Stallone is hanging off cliffs (heh) and above him is a distractingly obvious blurry line where they attempted to hide the safety line.

I faulted the old DVD's image quality and frankly can't recall how good the Blu-ray is, but the iTunes 4K presentation is very nice with good detail - I noticed for the first time in a shot where the baddies are hiking atop a cliff face that Gabe and Jessie were directly beneath them on the face (you won't see that on your phones, kids) - and the boost from Dolby Vision enhanced the lighting in some shots like "God rays" from the Sun in one stunning vista I'd never noticed before as well.

Shot anamorphically on film there is some softness at times due to the format and lens and the snowy gray mountains limit the color palette, but splashes of color like explosions, the red-orange of helicopter, and green trees pop nicely. The Dolby Atmos audio gets your height speakers going with helicopters, jets and explosions.

Unfortunately, there are no extras included when the Blu-ray had two commentary tracks (one with Harlen and Stallone), deleted scenes, and other featurettes, so this isn't a one-and-done purchase for completionists. You'll need to keep your old disc if you care about that stuff, so hold for a $5 sale to buy this.

The Nineties were a peak time for action movies but for some reason Cliffhanger gets overlooked in favor of titles like Speed or even Under Seige, but it's top shelf fun and barring the paucity of extras, it's worth getting in 4K.

Score: 8.5/10. Buy it.