Cliffhanger : Collector's Edition

The Plot: The Long Version
Some bad guys who have hijacked a jet containing cash-stuffed cases crash into the Rocky Mountains (played by the Italian Alps). Led by head honcho bad guy Eric Qualen (a very hammy John Lithgow making the most of an easy paycheck and a free holiday in the snow), the baddies need to find the cases of cash scattered across the mountains, so they call on the unsuspecting mountain rescue people (Stallone, Rooker, Turner) to lead the way, intending to kill them once they’ve recovered the money. Obviously, Sly doesn’t like this plan, so takes it upon himself to rescue the good guys from certain death, and kill all the bad guys before they can get their grubby little hands on the money.

Stallone, Rooker and Turner have their own little issues to deal with while battling the badguys. Previously, Stallone accidentally dropped Rooker’s girlfriend 8000 feet to her death, which pissed off Rooker a bit. Stallone then disappeared for a while to clear his head, find himself and discover Allah. This pissed off his girlfriend, Turner, a bit. When he shows up out of the blue again, the old feelings are stirred up a mite. It’s at this point that the bad guys arrive and interrupt the healing process for our three heroes.

The Plot: The Short Version
Stallone, a mountain and some bad guys.

About The Plot
The bits about the money aren’t important. The bits about forgiving friends isn’t important. The bits about letting go of the past aren’t important. The bits about running off cliffs and beating the crap outta the bad guys are important. This is the film Stallone made when he realised (or was told by his accountant) that as a comedian in films, he sucked the big one. So, never having finished his apprenticeship in cabinet-making and not really knowing how to do anything useful, he got back to what he did best -running around, sneering at things, blowing stuff up, screaming and acting macho.

The end result, as far as action films go, is actually pretty good. It knows it’s big, dumb, loud and stupid. In fact, it revels in it. Everyone hams it up a treat, but they know that no-one cares what they say or how they say it. No Oscar is going to be handed out here my friends, but who cares when they made a bucket load of money instead.

Cliffhanger uses a nice wide 2.35:1 AR with an anamorphic transfer to showcase the grand mountain ranges of the Alps. The transfer quality allows you to enjoy the film without any real flaws in the image to distract you while your brain sits happily in neutral absorbing the action. Detail throughout is great, with the photography of the mountain ranges (and fantastic sweeping photography it is) showing up minute texture in every shot and only minor edge enhancement creeping in to some shots. Colours are natural looking, right through to reflecting the fact that the obviously cold environment created bluish tinge in faces as the harsh snowy environment sucked a bit of colour from character’s faces at times.

I wish I could say that the audio was as good as the video, but it has an issue with some poor ADR work which peppers the dialogue. Even though he film doesn’t really have a lot of dialogue (or at least much which matters) I noticed quite a few times where the ADR was out of whack and caught my attention. Some might find it more annoying than others, but I have to say that on a second less critical viewing of the film, it didn’t really seem like such a issue, and I was happy to overlook it. Beyond this, the qualities of the audio mix is actually extremely good. The film presents plenty of opportunity for active use of the surround channels, and does so with gusto. The soundstage is open and broad, dialogue is clear even at times when the score and effects kick into overdrive, and it’s all supported by good use of the LFE channel. Overall, I found that this was a dynamic mix which wasn’t fatiguing to listen too.

Working our way through the extra features on this dvd, we start with Filmographies for cast and director, then a Theatrical Trailer section which has the theatrical trailer and a short “How it was Produced� featurette of Renny Harlin speaking about creating the trailer for Cliffhanger.

The Audio Commentaries has one by Director Renny Harlin which isn’t too bad, but he speaks in a pretty dull voice and doesn’t get too excited, even though he does tell us a lot about how things got shot, where and what the conditions were etc, etc. Stallone is cut into this commentary with separately recorded segments a few times to add his own thoughts to particular topics Harlin touches on. The other commentary is from the Editor and the Technical crew, and basically goes into a bit of depth discussing the technical aspects of shooting much of the film. Not a bad pair of commentaries as far as these things go, sure to teach you more than you ever needed to know about Cliffhanger.

Next up, Photo Galleries has 22 stills from within the film, Crew is a list of some of the crew and had me enthralled for 1.8 seconds, and then there’s theMaking Of: Stallone on the Edge feature. This is your typical fluffy promo piece. Watch Stallone tuck in his shirt! Watch Stallone ask Renny his motivation for looking over a cliff!

On to the Deleted Scenes, we are given a brief intro by Harlin explaining why the scenes “King’s Leap� (SEE Stallone fly!) and “Ice Climb� were cut. Special Effects: How It Was Done explains how they created the helicopter explosion(with scenes of the miniature model work) and Sarah’s fall(from the beginning of the film) which is just Harlin talking over the top of the in-film footage. The scary thing is that Sarah’s scene was shot using her hanging from the wire supported by just a one eighth inch wire hanging 8,000 feet above the ground. Sarah’s a bloody lunatic, if you ask me.

Moving right along, we have Storyboard Comparisons which show the storyboard sequence onscreen with the relevant footage playing together for three segments: Air-To-Air Transfer, Helicopter Explosion and Sarah’s Fall. The final extra is a Director Introduction where Harlin talks about how the film came to be briefly.

Quite a collection of extras, as you can see, and probably well deserving of the Collector’s Edition moniker.

Stallone has copped a lot of flack for some dud pics in his career, but I think this is one which he can be pleased with. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a big, loud, fun, popcorn flick, and succeeds quite happily at this. Asides from the dialogue problems, with the mix of plentiful extra features, a great picture and at times bombastic audio, I have no doubt that this Cliffhanger dvd will be making it’s way into plenty of homes.