Cliffhanger (1993)

Share this quote on facebook Don't bother to buckle up - you may not want to survive this.

Share this quote on facebook Kill a few people, they call you a murderer. Kill a million and you're a conqueror.

Share this quote on facebook Hal Tucker: Delmar, from me to you, you're an asshole.
Delmar: Yeah? And you're a loud-mouth punk slag, who's about to die.
Hal Tucker: Maybe. But in a minute I'll be dead, and you, will always be an asshole.

Share this quote on facebook Travers: Tucker and Walker! We're missing 3 bags.
Gabe Walker: What's in them?
Travers: None of your fucking business!
Eric Qualen: Suits, socks, 100 million dollars - the usual stuff.

Share this quote on facebook Eric Qualen: Do you know what real love is, Kristel?
Kristel: No.
Eric Qualen: [whispers in her ear] Sacrifice...
[shoots her]

Share this quote on facebook Hang on.

Share this quote on facebook HARLIN: Actually, it was first a movie called Gale Force, which was a hurricane movie. That script never came together, and then the same deal was replaced with Cliffhanger.

Share this quote on facebook IGNFF: What was the development process for Cliffhanger? It wasn't written with Stallone in mind, was it?

Share this quote on facebook "CLIFFHANGER," the new high-altitude thriller starring Sylvester Stallone, wastes no time in establishing its first priority, that of sending its audience into a cold sweat. This effect is achieved spectacularly well with a long, death-defying credit sequence set somewhere near the ozone layer. Mr. Stallone, playing a pumped-up Rocky Mountain rescue worker with an incongruously Presidential haircut, does his best to save a young woman who hangs precariously from a rope across a terrifyingly deep abyss. You will be in no hurry to mountain-climb after watching this scene.
At such moments, and "Cliffhanger" has many of them, thoughts about life insurance come to mind. Was Sylvester Stallone really filmed atop the dizzyingly high, needle-shaped peak that figures prominently in the film's opening? Did he really scale the kinds of cliffs and mountainsides that are seen here? Did he hang in midair from a fraying rope, cross great chasms via rickety bridges or battle over a helicopter about to plunge into oblivion? Obviously, a great deal of credit goes to stunt doubles and optical tricks, but the illusion is still astonishingly effective. "Cliffhanger" really seems to be set somewhere up in the sky.

Share this quote on facebook Someday they'll make an action picture that manages to do without a plot. Someday they'll figure out how to squeeze so much mayhem into two hours that it won't matter who is doing what to whom. But for now, no matter how spectacular the stunts are, they still have to be connected to a scenario, and as long as that's the case, films like "Cliffhanger" (citywide) are going to continue to fall short.
Make no mistake, the high-flying stunts in director Renny Harlin's film are definitely state of the art, and while they're going on, the film works up a serious level of excitement. But as soon as the action stops and the inevitable talking begins, "Cliffhanger" falls to earth with a considerable thud.

Share this quote on facebook Dialogue is the only real drawback, since the screenplay by Michael France and Mr. Stallone tends to be as drab as the mountains are beautiful.

Share this quote on facebook Until it takes a turn toward nasty sadism in its later stages—one character is impaled on an icicle, for instance -- "Cliffhanger" remains relatively bloodless and crisp, preferring to concentrate on sheer gamesmanship and clever effects.