Cliffhanger is a 1993 American action thriller film starring Sylvester Stallone as a mountain climber who becomes embroiled in the heist of a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains. It is directed by Renny Harlin and written by Stallone and Michael France. It also stars John Lithgow, Michael Rooker and Janine Turner. It was the last film to use the 1984–1993 TriStar Pictures logo. It is the first installment in the Cliffhanger film series.
The film premiered at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 1993, and was released in the United States on May 28, 1993, by TriStar Pictures. It received mixed to positive reviews and earned $255 million worldwide against a $70 million budget, becoming the 7th-highest-grossing film of 1993.
Plot
Mountain rescue rangers Gabe Walker, his girlfriend Jessie Deighan, and Frank attempt to rescue their fellow ranger Hal Tucker and his girlfriend Sarah, stranded in the Colorado Rockies. Sarah's harness breaks loose, and she falls to her death, despite Walker's effort to save her. Hal blames a guilt-stricken Walker, who leaves the ranger service.
Eight months later, Walker returns to collect his belongings and persuade Jessie to leave with him, but she refuses. Meanwhile, psychopathic former military intelligence operative Eric Qualen orchestrates the robbery of over $100 million in three suitcases of uncirculated bills. Turncoat U.S. Treasury agent Richard Travers hijacks the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 carrying the money, betraying and shooting his team members, and attempting to transfer the cases in midair to Qualen and his team of mercenaries aboard a Lockheed JetStar. One of the wounded agents, Matheson, shoots at the criminals before the DC-9 is blown up, forcing the JetStar to crash land in the Rockies and scattering the cases across the mountainside. Meanwhile, FBI agents visit Treasury agent Walter Wright, Travers' superior, and warn him that Qualen has the resources and experience to organize the robbery, that Matheson was sent undercover to stop it, and that Qualen is armed.
Hal remains bitter over Sarah's death. He responds to a fake distress call from the mercenaries, while Jessie convinces Gabe to help. He and Hal are taken prisoner by Qualen, Travers, and their accomplices Kristel, Kynette, Delmar, Ryan, and Heldon. Using Travers' beacon locator, Hal and Walker are ordered to track down the first case atop a steep rock face. Walker is tethered and forced to climb and retrieve the case, but Hal warns that Qualen will kill him, and Walker severs his rope before he can be yanked down. Heldon opens fire and is killed by the ensuing avalanche, which leads Qualen to believe the case is lost and Walker is dead.
While Hal is forced to lead the mercenaries onward, Walker races ahead and finds Jessie at an old ranger station. They recover mountaineering gear and reach the second case before Qualen arrives at nightfall, burning the money to stay warm and leaving him a taunting message, "Want to trade?" Looking through night-vision goggles, Ryan spots Walker and Jessie, but Gabe blinds him with a flare, and the two slide down a slope. Ryan careens over the edge of a cliff to his death in a gorge. The next morning, Walker and Jessie race to beat Qualen to the last case, while Hal tries to warn away two young climbers, Evan and Brett, before Qualen's men open fire. Brett is killed, but a wounded Evan base jumps off the mountain and parachutes to safety.
Frank, scouting the mountain by helicopter in search of his friends, rescues Evan. Kynette confronts Walker in a brutal fistfight in a cave, but Walker impales him on a stalactite after Kynette threatens Jessie's life. Hal alerts him that the gang has rigged explosives above the cave, and Walker and Jessie narrowly escape. The mercenaries flag down Frank in his rescue helicopter, and Delmar fatally shoots him. When Travers attempts to betray the others, Qualen forces him to stay by killing Kristel, leaving Qualen as their only pilot.
As the mercenaries split up to look for the last case, Hal stabs Delmar in his right leg with Frank's knife, then kills Delmar with his own shotgun and escapes, while Walker recovers the money from the last case. He plants the tracking beacon on a rabbit to frustrate an increasingly unhinged Travers, who rants at Qualen over the walkie-talkie, thereby allowing the authorities to track their position. Pursued by Travers, Walker falls into a frozen river but kills Travers through the ice with a climbing-bolt gun, and is rescued by Hal.
Jessie signals to the rescue helicopter, believing it to be Frank, and is taken hostage by Qualen, who demands that Walker and Hal surrender the money. Meeting high atop the cliffs, Qualen frees Jessie, but Walker throws the bag of money into the helicopter's rotor blades, shredding the cash, and tethers the helicopter's winch cable to a cliffside ladder. Hal helps shoot down the helicopter, which hangs over the cliff with Walker and Qualen atop the wreckage. Walker fights off Qualen and climbs to safety as the wreckage falls off the cliff, killing Qualen. The authorities arrive as Walker reunites with Jessie and Hal.
Cast
Production Development and writing Carolco Pictures had originally signed Sylvester Stallone to appear opposite John Candy in a comedy about feuding neighbors titled Bartholomew vs. Neff, which was going to be written and directed by John Hughes. When that project was dropped, Stallone became involved in two other Carolco projects.
The first one was the futuristic science-fiction horror film Isobar, which was about a genetically-created monster who breaks free on a high-speed runaway train: between 1987, when Carolco first bought the original script by Jim Uhls for $400,000, and 1991, directors Ridley Scott and Roland Emmerich were each at different points in time attached to direct the film which would have had a $90 million budget with Stallone and Kim Basinger playing the main roles; however, due to disagreements between them and Carolco and producer Joel Silver about the script changes and lack of artistic freedom, both Scott and Emmerich gave up on the project, which in the end was cancelled.The Greatest Sci-fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes
The second Carolco project in which Stallone was involved was an action disaster thriller entitled Gale Force, described as "Die Hard in a hurricane", which Renny Harlin was going to direct, and in which Stallone would play an ex-Navy SEAL who has to fight against a group of modern pirates who attack a coastal town during a large, catastrophic hurricane. The first version of the script for the film was written by David Chappe in 1984, who then wrote six more drafts between 1987 and 1989, and after his final draft received some praise and following the bidding war between several studios for it in 1989, Carolco bought his final draft for $500,000, with a promise of an additional $200,000 if the movie were made. Harlin was paid $3 million for directing the film, but because his contract also gave him full control of the project, he demanded many re-writes of the script to, amongst other things, increase the number of action sequences and make them bigger. Between 1990 and 1991 while they were working on the project, Carolco spent over $4 million on all the different screenwriters and versions of the script. One of the screenwriters who worked on it, Joe Eszterhas, was paid $500,000 to write his version. He re-wrote it as an erotic thriller, similar to his previous screenplays, so it was rejected.
Carolco, believing the intended $40 million budget would be too big, and unable to figure out how to make special effects for the film, cancelled that project two weeks before production was supposed to begin; but Harlin still kept his $3 million, and he and Stallone and everyone else involved in it then moved on to Cliffhanger, another Carolco project, which had a budget of $70 million, almost double that of Gale Force.
Harlin wanted David Bowie and Bryan Ferry for the role of Eric Qualen, but scheduling problems prevented Bowie from taking it, and the role eventually went to John Lithgow. Reviewers have suggested that the 1956 dramatic film The Mountain provided some of the inspiration for Cliffhanger, which has multiple similarities.McEneany, Chris: "The Mountain Movie Review," March 18, 2012, AVForums, retrieved April 7, 2024 Before production began, Stallone rewrote Michael France's script: his work changed the film significantly enough that Carolco petitioned the Writers Guild of America for him to get credit.
Half of the film's budget was provided by TriStar Pictures in exchange for distribution rights in North America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France.Prince, Stephen (2000) A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989 (p. 148). University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, California. Seed funding was provided by Carolco shareholders Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera, Le Studio Canal+, and Pioneer Electric Corporation. The balance of the production costs were obtained through a production loan provided by a syndicate of banks led by Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland (CLBN). The credit of US$46,553,000 was, at the time, one of the largest project loan facilities ever to be made for the production of an independent film, and was fully repaid from the movie’s distribution proceeds.
The financing arrangement was the result of Carolco's serious debt issues, and as a result, Carolco would ultimately receive very little of the box office gross. During principal photography, production was shut down twice when Carolco could not afford to pay the crew; the movie went $40 million over budget. Stallone reportedly had to forego $2 million of his $15 million salary as a result.
Filming The large majority of the film's scenes were shot in the Dolomites in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. For example, the bridge scene was shot on Monte Cristallo in the via ferrata VF Ivano Dibona, which was reconstructed immediately after the movie. The climbing was mostly on the Tofane cliffs, and in some scenes toward the end of the movie the audience clearly sees the three Tofane, the Croda da Lago and the town of Cortina; the location of this is on top of Mount Faloria, at the arrival of the funivia Faloria. In other scenes are the sentiero ferrato Astaldi, over the Rifugio Dibona. The small house has been constructed on the sand of the river Boite, in Fiames, close to the heliport. Some filming took place in Durango, Colorado. The credits of the film also thank the Ute Tribe for filming in the Ute Mountain reservation.
Cliffhanger is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the costliest aerial stunt ever performed. Stuntman Simon Crane was paid $1 million to perform the aerial transfer scene, where he crossed between two planes at an altitude of . The principal climbing doubles were Ron Kauk and Wolfgang Güllich. Kauk performed as Stallone's climbing double after Güllich died in a car accident in 1992. The doubles filled in for Stallone on most of the climbing scenes due to the actor's fear of heights; an injury to Stallone's hand, reported to have occurred on one of the cliffs, actually occurred on a soundstage.
When asked about the director's cut, Stallone explained that "the director's cut was met with a lot of disapproval at the screening and received some alarmingly low scores. Mainly because the stunts were absurdly overblown. For example, the average man can jump maybe twelve feet across a gorge, and the stunts had me leaping maybe three hundred feet or more, so situations like that had to be pared down and still then were fairly extreme...so you're probably better off with this cut. By the way, the second unit crew that filmed the majority of the action was extraordinary."
Music