There’s something about 90s action movies that hit a little different. Maybe it’s because the notion of the high concept, single sentence pitch was at the peak of its hyperbolic powers after the testing ground of the late 80s or maybe it’s because the productions of these things had hit a sweet spot between visual effects and practical location shooting, but a really good 90s actioner managed to balance the lunacy of the previous decade with heroes that were more on the side of believable (sort of) and the genesis of this was arguably John McTiernen’s Die Hard.
Nailing Die Hard’s pitch perfect tone became the action movie’s holy grail and after all manner of Die-Hard-on-a-blank pretenders that included airports, planes, trains, boats, buses and sports arenas, one of the very best remains near the pinnacle of the sub-genre. Behold, Die Hard on a mountain.
Gabriel Walker, once the best climbing rescue guy in the Colorado Rockies, has returned to his old stomping ground in nearly a year after a tragic accident saw his best friend’s girlfriend literally slip through his fingers and plummet to her death. After the event caused him to lose his nerve while wrapping him in a crotch biting harness made of guilt, he dropped off the face of the earth, only to return to plead with his estranged girlfriend and fellow park ranger, Jessie, to come with him.
Meanwhile, in the skies above, former Military Intelligence operative and fully paid up lunatic Eric Qualen and his team of thugs have teamed up with a turncoat U.S. Treasury agent to perform a daring robbery of $100 million in uncirculated Bill’s mid flight, however, things go impressively tits up leaving three cases of money dotted about the mountains and Qualen’s jet downed.
Taking the initiative, the villains call for rescue, hoping to use heroic mountain climbers to recover the loot, but after Walker agrees to do one last climb, not only does it lead to friction with his still bitter friend, Hal Tucker, but it leads to them both being taken hostage by Qualen and his alpha male goons.
Before you know it, Gabe has managed to escape and mad chase begins across the frozen, jagged landscape as our tormented hero tries to get to the cases of money before the bad guys do while trying to freeze to death, get shot, stabbed, or take a fatal header off the nearest peak.
However, as Gabe manages to whittle Qualen’s gang down after a number of death-defying scrapes, the desperate struggle soon ensures Jessie too meaning that Walker’s going to have to cling on extra tight if he’s going to stop more of his loved ones dying on this mountain.
No stranger to snow after his notoriously tough experiences on Die Hard 2, towering Finnish maniac, Renny Harlin managed to take what could have been just another Die Hard riff and produce probably one of the most sweat inducing, white knuckling actioners of the decade. The main selling point was, obviously, the remote location that would see a more restrained Sylvester Stallone give it his best everyman as he battled killers around 14,000 feet above sea level and Harlin wisely milks the living shit out of every spot of vertigo he can. From the truly devastating opening sequence alone – which could easily be the single most gripping moment of any 90s action movie – Cliffhanger mercilessly gives us enough shots of people clinging, dangling or hanging from impossibly high place to give Ethan Hunt morning wood and thanks to some real care and attention, any nerve shattering shot that isn’t done for real is created with visual effects that hold up enough to maintain the illusion and are guaranteed to give anyone cursed with acrophobia a severe case of the wobbles.
Seemingly sensing that the age of the indestructible action hero was coming to an end (the failure of Rambo III pretty much confirmed it), Stallone and Harlin strives to make Gabe more of a relatable sort (well, as relatable as you can be when you’re bench pressing thugs into stalactites) and keeps his legendary guns – both kinds – under wraps and instead uses those emotive eyes to give us a lead driven by guilt. As a result, Stallone is somewhat subdued, even when out running exploding rope bridges and dodging avalanches, but who needs Sly trying to hog the limelight when the rest of the cast is packed with gun-ho character actors. Looking disturbingly at home with all this outdoors stuff is professional gravel-voiced badass, Michael Rooker, who gives us a welcome good-guy role and manages to stand out even when he spends most of the time as a hostage. However, even he gets to join in with the action shit at the end and even delivers the movie’s best kiss-off line by far as he takes out a psychotic football fan with an immensely satisfying “Season’s over, asshole!”.
Still, if Stallone and Rooker are enjoying playing relatively normal guys, John Lithgow is positively having a fucking ball playing an antagonist who sends the villainous bastard-o-meter into over drive as the dastardly Qualen – in fact, it’s tough to call which gets flexed harder, Stallone’s bulging biceps as he clings to a rocky outcrop for an outlandishly long time, or Lithgow’s ludicrously sinister english accent which barely stops short at coming complete with a twirled moustache, top hat and monocle. Even better is the fact that Qualen’s goons don’t even try and resemble the charismatic ensemble that stormed the Nakatomi Plaza back in ’87 and instead are all throughly irredeemable pieces of shit who genuinely seem to despise each other almost as much as they hate the white hats who have made off with their money. As a result, it’s tremendously satisfying when one is sent screaming off the side of the mountain and if you’re not urging audiences to cheer a horrible death, are you even 90s actioning, bro?
Fast paced, genuinely nerve shredding and all set to a thunderous score by Trevor Jones who seems to have been bodily possessed by Alan Silvestri, Cliffhanger may be the best movie that Harlin ever made as it utilises its surroundings expertly for maximum excitement. Yes, those painfully 90s, extreme sports dudes are annoying as hell and some might find that Stallone’s Walker a mite too vanilla compared to his wisecracking peers, yet this still remains the premium action movie on a mountain that remains, after all these years, peak entertainment.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 