Cliffhanger (1993)

Directed by Renny Harlin. Starring Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Rex Linn, Craig Fairbrass, Caroline Goodall, Ralph Waite, Leon, Paul Winfield, Michelle Joyner, Max Perlich, Trey Brownell. [R]

It’s expert-mountain-climber-with-a-troubled-recent-past Stallone vs. a gang of ruthless thieves led by Lithgow’s scenery-gnashing psychopath—they lost a few suitcases filled with cold hard cash over the Rocky Mountains, and won’t hesitate to kill anyone standing in their way (or, really, anyone who’s expendable to their mission). The story is thinner than the elevated mountain air, and there are roughly as many plot holes in the script as there are bullet holes in the corpses, but the scenery/photography is spectacular, the fight scenes are well done, and some of the stunt/effects sequences are doozies, including a mid-air hijacking between two airplanes and the nail-biting prologue (memorably spoofed in the second Ace Ventura picture). Stallone meets the clichéd heroic expectations, Lithgow exceeds the clichéd villainous ones, and director Harlin keeps the white-knuckle thrills and violent action coming for an entertaining show—a must for 90s action movie fans, even the ones who’ll raise eyebrows at the sight of Lithgow (temporarily) holding his own in a climactic mano a mano with Rambo of the Rockies. Italy’s Dolemites stand in for those mountains for the majority of the film.

77/100