Let's Hang Off Some Cliffs!
And watch John Lithgow give the craziest performance of his career!
A note:
I don’t know what’s going on over at the NYT, but when I posted about Roadhouse last year and how it was so bad it was good, they wrote about it, like, immediately afterwards. Then, here I am, announcing an upcoming post about the good bad movie Cliffhanger, not exactly a movie on the tip of everyone’s tongue at the moment, and they go and write about it as… a good bad movie. For the record I didn’t read either of their articles (I’m too cheap to get past the paywall), so if anything below ends up being similar, it is because it is not terribly insightful, not because it is ripped off. Ha.
Anyway. Do I really think that I’m so cool that the NYT is scavenging my Substack for ideas? No. But… The timing is major suss.
I’ve got my eye on you, NYT 👀
Die Hard in the Mountains
Cliffhanger is one of the many movies that came out in the late 80’s / early 90’s trying to recreate the magic of Die Hard. We had Die Hard on a bus (Speed), Die Hard on a sub (Under Siege), Die Hard on a plane (Air Force One), and now… here was Die Hard in the mountains.
Who better to direct a Die Hard knockoff than the director of the original Die Hard knockoff, Die Hard 2! Renny Harlin, come on down!
For the record, I love Die Hard 2 (don’t come at me - it’s really fun, ok?) and it shows Renny Harlin knows his way around an over the top action sequence like the best of them.
So, let me tell you, he directs the HELL out of Die Hard On A Mountain whoops I mean Cliffhanger.
Ahem. Visually.
Story and performance-wise? Eh, not so much.
But, visually, hot damn he killed it.
Get ready for incredible scenery, dynamic shots, complex staging and…
… performances ranging from monotone to batshit!
Let’s gooooooooo
Mountains Are Mountains, Right?
The opening shot of this movie is just insanely gorgeous and it is followed by about a million more insanely gorgeous shots. As you marvel at these incredible peaks and rock formations, you might think to yourself… “Where the hell in America is that?”
And, of course, the answer is nowhere because this whole thing was pretty much shot in the Dolomites in Italy. Although the movie supposedly takes place in Colorado.
Which, I imagine Colorado must have been pretty stoked about because… what a commercial for Colorado! This place looks stunning!
Hopefully no one moved there because of this movie and then had buyer’s remorse when they realized they should have moved to Italy.
I wonder if there are Cliffhanger refugees out there somewhere…
What A Title Card
While a rescue helicopter is flying around these breathtaking mountains, good ol’ Sly is doing some seriously death-defying rock climbing. When asked over the radio what he’s doing, he says, “I’m just hanging out.”
Ha. Ha.
And then someone calls him a ‘rock jock.’
But it leads to this remarkable image for the title card and damn if it isn’t perfect.
What the movie does remarkably well throughout is sell you on Sly himself doing all of the climbing which apparently he actually did very little of due to his fear of heights. I mean, that’s definitely him hanging by one arm:
He’s also a co-writer on the movie which is weird that he’s afraid of heights and then wrote himself a movie where he has to hang on cliffs. A complicated man.
So, things have started off good! We’ve got scope! We’ve got stunts! We’ve got…
LEON!
This is really the first sign of things to come, I think. You’re watching the actor credits fade on and off and when you get to “LEON” you just wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.
So the helicopter flies over to the top of these two super high rock formations on which sit Michael Rooker and his girlfriend who got stuck up there.
