Best of the Rest: Cliffhanger (1993)

Tangent 1985 Presents

Every form of media has known individuals who’ve hit hard only to fade away, and film is no exception. Any number of directors have coasted through their careers without fanfare or renown, producing years of work and a filmography that hovers somewhere on the spectrum between middling to competent, but every once in a while, the stars align, fortune smiles, and those select few filmmakers hit a homerun, conjuring that one unforeseen blockbuster that forever guarantees their name will be remembered.

From time to time, we here at Tangent 1985 devote a little energy to showcasing the incredible cinematic contributions of these directors. This is Best of the Rest, and today we’re discussing Renny Harlin’s zealous, better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be 1993 action spectacular, Cliffhanger.

Any footage of just a bunch of people rioting/yelling/complaining/booing/revolting

Now don’t blow your stack; I already know what you’re thinking. How can I sit here in good faith and do a Best of the Rest on, of all people, Renny “The Viking King” Harlin?

Jake’s line, “Okay, you’re the only one who calls him that,” from Brooklyn Nine-Nine

And yes, at first glance, you would be right. Harlin’s no Flavor of the Month. This is the guy who brought us the second best Die Hard and the fourth best Nightmare on Elm Street. Do not “at” me! He has a body of work that spans decades. Much of it isn’t very good, mind you. Fun? Sure? Good? Debatable. And if you think me wrong, I surmise the combined fog of time and distance has in all likelihood dulled your recollection, so if it’s remembrance you’re in need of, I invite you to follow me as we stare into…

Cue “O, Fortuna”

Fade to Title: The Abyss

Time lyrics with a super-cut of only the most absurd moments from The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Cutthroat Island, Mindhunters, Driven, The Covenant, Exorcist: The Beginning, and end on that moment from Deep Blue Sea when Sam Jackson gets eaten by a shark. There are others, I’m sure.

With all of that in mind, I’m willing to give The Long Kiss Goodnight something of a pass here. It’s aided immensely by its solid premise, amusing leads, and a Shane Black script that falls somewhere between The Monster Squad and Iron Man 3 in terms of quality, but I revisited that film in preparation for this video a couple weeks ago, and I gotta tell you, it’s more of a mess than you probably remember. Of course, none of that matters right now. Right now, provided you aren’t busy lighting torches over my feelings on The Long Kiss Goodnight, you’re probably thinking to yourself, no way is Cliffhanger a more white-knuckle, action-packed, edge-of-your-seat thrill tornado of carnage, mayhem, and death than Die Hard 2: The Hardening…

Napoleon’s line, “God! Gross!” from Napoleon Dynamite

…but it kinda is. Hell, if Rotten Tomatoes is to be regarded as any sort of authority on the matter, and make no mistake, it should not be, the two films are allegedly of relative equal caliber. But what does Rotten Tomatoes know?

Sean Parker’s whispered, “Nothing,” from The Social Network

Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 are, in my opinion, Renny Harlin’s two best films, but I rate Cliffhanger the superior entry, and if you give me a moment or three, I’ll tell you why. But before we get into that, let’s learn a little bit about the man behind the wheel.

Title: The Viking King

The 6’4” Renny Lauri Mauritz Harjola is, it would seem, a man of extremes. He’s the most successful Finnish director in Hollywood history; and regardless of your feelings towards Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, it remains the highest grossing, shameless gimmick-free – Jason! – chapter in the franchise. And, before you start, that Michael Bay-backed remake does not count. It didn’t happen. It didn’t – No! I can’t hear you.

Axel Foley’s, “I am not listening to Jeffrey! Lalalalalalala!” from Beverly Hills Cop

Cliffhanger earned an estimated $255 million at the global box office, fifteen million more than Die Hard 2 and netted three Oscar nominations to boot, but it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Harlin’s lows were as low as his highs were high, and for every leap forward, he suffered a colossal setback. Cutthroat Island reeled in only $10 million against a budget of a hundred, earning it, for a while at least, the distinction of being the largest flop in Hollywood History, and while The Long Kiss Goodnight may have been a hit with critics, it was panned by moviegoers, taking in only about half of what it cost.

Harlin made the move to Chinese cinema and the fastest growing movie market in the world in 2016 and hasn’t looked back, and I’ll give him a few seconds to tell you why:

Harlin’s quote, “To me, China today is something that Hollywood was for me in the 80s. A Land of opportunity, a land of passion and excitement.”

He recently released Bodies at Rest, his third Chinese production, in 2019, a star-studded actioner about bad guys who take over a morgue, proving that with one truly out of this world exception, he’s still making the kinds of films he’s always excelled at. I’m pleased he’s found what he’s been looking for and a place for him to continue doing what he does best, for better or worse.

And here’s a pretty good place for that weird panda footage.

Harlin is a director who, quite simply, cannot drive in the middle of the road. He has two settings: shoot the moon or sink the Titanic, and there is no in-between. Producer Mario Kassar had actually wanted Harlin to helm a remake of the Bogart-led 1948 John Huston crime noir Key Largo. That picture, titled Gale Force, was to be a Sly Stallone action vehicle about a former Navy SEAL who goes up against pirates – probably not that kind – during a hurricane, but that never materialized, and the three parties – Stallone, Kassar, and Harlin – went to work on Cliffhanger instead, which is a good thing in retrospect, because if Gale Force had gone ahead as scheduled, we might now be living in a world without Rob Cohen’s The Hurricane Heist. Truly the darkest of timelines.

Cue Frank Sinatra’s Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Title: Die Hard the Lesser

Before we go any further, I have to qualify that rather incendiary statement from earlier – the one about Cliffhanger being superior to Die Hard 2, so here I go. In all fairness, Die Hard 2 is pretty awesome. It features some truly rowdy action set pieces like that ejector seat bit and that righteous kung fu fight with Colonel Stuart on the wing of the plane; some great people turn up in it unexpectedly like Robert Patrick, Colm Meaney, and Robert Costanzo (use footage of Detective Bullock from Batman: The Animated Series instead of the actor); William Sadler’s butt gets some primo airtime; there’s a reference in it to Steven E. de Souza’s favorite fictional South American country, Val Verde, the same one Arnold Schwarzenegger singlehandedly blows off the face of the Earth in Commando; William Atherton’s Richard Thornberg really gets to show off – more so even than in the first one – how dangerous his rampant ego can be (show the panic in the airport terminal); John James “Good Times” Evans Amos is in it, a man who is rarely better than when he’s playing an imposing military type:

Admiral Firzwallace’s line, “You’re talking to me about international laws? The laws of nature don’t even apply here!” from The West Wing

And – spoiler alert! Who can forget – spoiler alert – that insane Third Act – spoiler alert – twist with Major Grant’s Special Forces unit? Yeah, Die Hard 2 is pure popcorn flick fare, but it also tries way too hard to be a sequel, what with too many lines like:

McLane’s lines, “Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

And…

Holly’s line, “Why does this keep happening to us?”

Like there’s anybody in the audience who didn’t watch the first one. The authorities this time around aren’t just ineffectual, they’re incompetent. Dangerously so. It’s Christmastime. Again. Holly’s held hostage. Again. McLane tries to save an innocent from the terrorists’ clutches again, only this time it’s Ellis times a hundred when he fails to keep Stuart from crashing an airplane full of British civilians into the cold, cold ground. It’s just too much of a retread. And while Willis, Sadler, Amos, Franz, Bedelia, and Atherton are all great, there are a number of distractingly bad character actors, particularly in the control tower scenes, running amuck in this whose dialogue and delivery is so wooden, it actively harms the movie. Remember this guy?

Leslie Barnes’ line, “Yeah, I’ll live. But Lorenzo’s SWAT team is dead. And the antenna array is… is gone.”

Well, you won’t find any of that tomfoolery in Cliffhanger. No, sir. Well, unless you count Brett and Evan, but they’re at least funny.

Brett’s line, “Exactly, cheesehead, exactly,” Evan’s reply, “Cheesehead?” and Brett’s, “Cheesehead.” Get Evan’s sad face, too. (00:57:21)

So let’s get into it.

Title: Where Credit is Due

Screenwriting credits on this go to a number of people, including Sylvester Stallone himself, which time has proven is the kind of thing that can go both ways. Sometimes you get Rocky; others you get… Rocky V. But the one credit that stands out is this one. “Based on a premise by…”? What does that mean? Well, I’m glad you asked. After the script by Michael France was sold to Carolco Pictures, it was later revealed he wasn’t the originator of the idea. Now, you know Michael France, even if you don’t think you do. He came up with the story for Pierce Brosnan’s inaugural outing as 007, Goldeneye.

Homer’s line, “That’s good,” from The Simpsons

He also co-wrote the 2005 Fantastic Four.

Homer’s line, “That’s bad.”

The story that ultimately became Cliffhanger came from renowned rock climber and author John Long, who had first developed the property in the 80s along with producer Gene Hines, who was paid a $400,000 fee for the work. Hines would later be granted a coproducing credit, and John Long would receive the peculiar “Premise by” credit.

Now, before I get into this proper, the first thing you’ll no doubt notice about this movie is its score. Composed by Trevor Jones of The Dark Crystal and Last of the Mohicans to name only a couple examples from his impressive catalog, it is as ambitious and memorable as any of the action set pieces on constant display in this film. You’ll be hearing selections from it throughout the video, but in your downtime, I urge you to give it a listen, in particular the two-disc expanded edition released by La-La Land Records.

Title: The Harder the Fall

Cliffhanger opens on a breathtaking vista, the first of many, and while what we’re watching right now is meant to be Colorado, all of the mountain climbing scenes were actually shot in Cortina, Italy, in the Dolomites (Dolemite gag, if wanted), a region of the Alps to the northeast. Here we’re introduced to Stallone’s Gabe Walker and Michael Rooker’s Hal Tucker, who is currently stranded on a peak with his girlfriend Sarah, played by Michelle Joyner. You know Rooker from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and, if not that, Guardians of the Galaxy, Volumes 1 and 2.

Yondu’s line, “I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!” from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

It’s kind of awesome that he and Stallone got to reunite for that second one, albeit briefly, after a whopping twenty-four years. Anyway, we quickly learn Tucker and Walker are Rangers with the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, or RMRG for short. Fellow Rangers Jessie and Frank, played by Janine Turner of Northern Exposure and Ralph Waite of lots of stuff but mostly The Waltons, have joined Walker for the rescue, which brings me to the first thing I have to address. That’s really them! That’s not a green screen, and this isn’t a soundstage. This is 10,000 feet straight up, and Stallone is actually doing this, which is insane since, at the time of filming, he possessed a prohibitively debilitating fear of heights. Like, he couldn’t even ride elevators. He actually took the role in hopes of conquering his fear, which, if you need some perspective, is like me agreeing to star in a movie called The Venomous Snakes of Clown Mountain.

I’ll make you a poster for this.

Stallone had a world-famous climbing and stunt double for the wides in the form of late German super-climber Wolfgang Gullich, but what you see here is him. And that’s Rooker, who is literally bolted to the side of that mountain. They’re in no danger, but, well, yes, they are because 10,000 feet is ridiculously high. Just so you have a frame of reference, 10,000 feet is eight times the height of the Empire State Building! Successfully conveying that height to an audience seated safely on the ground, however, can be a challenge, which is the reason Harlin employs a number of sweeping camera moves at the start of the scene. Rocks don’t scale on camera, meaning they look the same size up close as they do from a distance, so in order to properly illustrate just how high up all of this takes place, the shot has to continuously switch perspective and angle.

The only way off this mountain is by traversing it via cable to an adjacent peak large enough for the helicopter to land on. This leads to the film’s inciting incident, a harrowing five minutes that set the tone for everything to come. When her climbing gear fails, Sarah is placed in immediate, mortal peril and Gabe races, against Hal’s wishes, to her aid. Hanging on for dear life – there’s a lot of that in here – with Sarah slipping closer to certain death every passing second, Gabe pleads with her all while Hal looks on helplessly from afar. And to make matters – Wait. Frank. Frank? Are you… enjoying this? What is wrong with you?

Pause at 00:10:30. Add Predator laugh complete with Alan Silvestri score as you ZOOM IN on Frank’s face.

Psycho. Anyway, Gabe can’t save her, Sarah swears off rock climbing and tries her hand at skydiving to equally unsuccessful results, and we’re left with an awful feeling that everything that’s happened here is going to come back to haunt us all very soon.

The next scene takes us to the Denver Mint several months later, but like the mountain stuff, this was also shot in Italy on a largely improvised set as the US Treasury Department is notoriously unhelpful to filmmakers interested in depicting their methods and protocols onscreen. Rex Linn of The Postman and CSI: Miami plays Travers, a crooked Treasury Agent foolishly trusted not to steal a shipment of $100 million in out-of-circulation bills, and Paul Winfield takes a break from getting vaporized (his death from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) long enough to put in a couple scenes as Agency Chief Walter Wright. So this scene sets up the board. $100 million in three briefcases are to be transported over the Rockies by plane because, according to Agent Wright:

Wright’s line, “Armored cars can be hijacked, trains derailed, but nobody can touch us in flight.” (00:13:09)

Yeah. About that.

Cue Aloe Blacc’s I Need a Dollar

Title: The Taking of Five-Lima

This is Eric Qualen, a former British Military Intelligence officer turned mercenary with a talent for international espionage and stealing the unstealable. Let me talk about John Lithgow for a second. John Lithgow is the kind of actor of stage and screen who personifies range. He’s played everything and everyone from an alien hiding out in suburbia to Winston Churchill, but where he really shines is whenever he gets to cut loose in a villain role. Ricochet, Raising Cain, and yes, absolutely Cliffhanger. Now, I’m a huge fan of movie villains, in general. This isn’t news to anybody here. They’re a great place for actors and actresses alike to really lean into a character and just go for the gold, but I’m especially gonzo for teams of villains. Hans Gruber’s boys from Die Hard, Clarence Boddikker’s cop killers from Robocop, De Niro’s crack team of professional thieves from Heat – I love a well-oiled machine of sadistic bad guys. You run into them in cartoons all the time: Cobra from GI Joe, the Decepticons from The Transformers, the many incarnations of the Legion of Doom from any number of DC animated shows – and that’s just the beginning! But they tend to be a little less common in live-action.

Now there’s a cliché about bad guys not being able to get along, which is, again, a very popular concept in animated and comic media but a little rarer in live-action, but it is easily one of the best things about Cliffhanger. The direction is tight, the action is stellar, and the score is sweeping and majestic, but the bad guys are what make this movie. They all hate each other, and it is art!

Delmar’s line, “I’ll break your fucking neck in a minute!” and Travers reply, “Yeah? Go ahead. Break my fucking neck!” (00:30:56); Delmar’s line, “I don’t need to hear that fucking shit from you, boy,” and Kynette’s response, “Maybe this boy should make your big mouth a little bigger!” (00:56:42); Kristel’s line, “You stupid maniac. Nobody told you to shoot!” (01:20:25) Travers’ line, “I’m getting real fucking tired of your threats.” And Kynette’s response, “Are you?” (00:51:17); Travers’ line, “I don’t give a shit, Eric Qualen!” (01:30:55); Qualen’s line, “Stop transmitting, you stupid bastard!” (01:31:22); and end on Qualen’s line, “You want to kill me, don’t you, Tucker? Well, take a number and get in line.” (01:16:07)

These people should not be working together, and that becomes clearer with every scene. The only reason any of them is here at all is out of greed, and after watching 110 minutes of their sustained, psychotic antics, it’s not hard to imagine they’d fucking eat one another without the money on the line to keep them civil let alone sane. Seriously, they’re a bunch of lunatics. They’re probably one of if not the least mentally sound units of villains ever put to screen!

Travers’ line, “Fuckin’ A, I’ve lost it, Qualen. Pure fuckin’ Section 8!” (01:31:40)

And the movie wants you to know they’re so heartless, so over-the-line barbaric, that every time they kill someone, the camera frames it like a presidential assassination.

Kynette firing his Uzi at Brett and Evan (01:00:00), Delmar executing Frank (01:20:10), and Qualen shooting Kristel in the back (01:23:36)

It’s all slow-mo MOS shots and swelling score. They’re so utterly unbalanced. It’s like if you put together a crack team of specialists, but everyone on the team is just Waingro.

Waingro’s line, “The Grim Reaper’s visiting with you,” from Heat

Now, at the risk of getting ahead of myself, I’ll be giving each of Qualen’s henchmen and women their due attention, but before we get into all of that…

What you’re about to watch is in the Guinness Book of World Records. At 17,000 feet and at the cost of one million dollars, veteran stuntman Simon Crane, who has risked life and limb on every movie from Aliens to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, performs the most expensive aerial stunt ever filmed: crossing by cable between two planes in flight without the aid of effects or safety devices. And while the majority of principal photography took place in Italy, this sequence had to be shot in America as a stunt of this caliber was illegal in Europe. In fact, the insurance company flat out refused to cover him, placing the scene’s very existence in danger, and Stallone himself stepped in, saving the stunt by willingly reducing his own fee by that million so they could keep it.

Edgar Friendly’s line, “What a fuckin’ hero,” from Demolition Man

You can see the moment when the footage switches between Rex Linn against a blue screen on-set and Simon Crane taking over at three miles up and forty below before switching back to Linn again on a soundstage. It’s already astounding, and we’re just getting started. When Travers accidentally leaves an agent alive on the plane, he mucks up the works for our bad guys in the middle of the heist, causing them to not only lose the cases of money somewhere over the Rockies, but forcing them to crash land their damaged plane after it takes heavy fire. The landing was achieved by combining footage of an actual plane flying dangerously low over the Colorado Mountains with a 60-foot model on a soundstage. It’s a fairly seamless transition that doesn’t sacrifice realism or take you out of the drama, even if you can tell the point at which it swaps, making this a far better crash sequence than some other plane movies I know.

The terrible CGI crash landing at the end of Air Force One followed by Stephen Colbert’s line, “That… was ugly!” from The Love Guru

Title: Snow Job

So the plane’s crashed, somebody named Mike is no longer alive…

Kristel’s line, “Mike? Shit.” (00:30:16)

…the money’s lost, and tensions are rising. Fast. Our guys are great at stealing stuff, but none of them is an expert in mountaineering, so they cook up a devious plan, calling in the Mighty Mountain Rescue Rangers or whatever they’re called to lead them to the scattered cases… or else. Tucker wants to go it alone, but Jessie manages to convince a reluctant Gabe, who hasn’t climbed in almost a year, that his former best friend needs help, even though Gabe knows Hal doesn’t want to see him. He did drop his girlfriend off a cliff, after all. He didn’t mean to, but, y’know, I get it. Anyway, that reunion goes about as well as expected, but until the “stranded hikers” are rescued, they agree to put their differences aside and work together for the greater good.

The NWA’s line, “The greater good,” from Hot Fuzz

And that shit goes south immediately. Now, I won’t spend much time talking about Heldon as he’s the first of Qualen’s team to die. Like Mike back there in the cockpit, he’s not onscreen enough to really get a sense of his personality. He gets taken out by an avalanche, an avalanche Harlin and his crew caused by dynamiting the side of this mountain with the cast actually standing on this ledge, which begs the question of how he’s not in a Finnish prison by now! Like, they’ll really just let you blow up a mountain anytime you want to? I wouldn’t have guessed that.

So with $30 some-odd million lost in the avalanche and Qualen believing Gabe dead, they strike out for the next case with Hal as guide and hostage, but Gabe’s fine. Sort of. I don’t know if I’d call this fine. Oh. And once more for the people in the back: That really is Sylvester Stallone climbing up the side of that cliff… in a T-shirt. And this frozen waterfall… in a T-shirt. And just for good measure, Harlin blasted him with a water hose right before this scene to really get across how cold he was out there, and if that’s not method, nothing is.

There are a lot of funny stories like that that came out of the filming of this movie, like how all the food meant to, y’know, keep the actors alive while they were on the shoot froze, and Harlin sent a team of professional skiers down the mountain to get pizza from the town and then hike it back up to where they were shooting before it froze, too. And then there’s the story of how some of the actors were worried about the effectiveness of the climbing equipment, so in order to prove to them how safe everything was, Harlin strapped on a cable and harness and just flung himself off the side of a mountain into thin air, which might just be the most Renny Harlin-ass thing I’ve ever heard.

Evey’s line, “Are you, like, a crazy person?” from V for Vendetta

So, while Hal buys time taking Qualen’s thugs the long way around to the second case, Gabe manages to reunite with Jessie, and they gear up at the Old Douglas Shack in preparation for taking the fight to the bad guys, and if you can’t tell by now how much I adore this movie, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Title: Ryan

At this point in the movie, night’s fallen. Gabe and Jessie have reached the next case before Qualen and the others, and when they learn that, it leads into one of my favorite fight scenes. Not only is the score during this scene fantastic, we get some great backlit shots of our evildoers, and while I’m not a director, if I can offer one piece of advice to anyone shooting an action movie:

Never miss an opportunity to show your villains just standing around looking awesome. Everyone should strive for at least one shot as cool as Hans Gruber stepping out of the van when his men arrive at Nakatomi Plaza. Harlin knew that, because he did it in Die Hard 2. It’s one of those things I never get tired of – bad guys looking cool – and this is one of my favorite instances of it.

So, Ryan. Ryan gets only marginally more screen-time than Heldon, but he goes out with so much more style. Donning a night vision scope to give him the advantage, he pursues Gabe and Jessie only to take a flare to the face. Blinded and enraged, the two end up sliding down an icy slope towards a cliff. Now here’s a question for everybody at home: If you had to guess, how would you say this stunt was accomplished? Is it…

A. They’re really just sliding down a hill.

B. It’s two dummies on a sled.

Or C. They’re being dragged by a truck.

Well, if you said C: dragged at high speed by a fucking truck, you win. The close-ups, like the one of Stallone going headfirst through a snow bank and Ryan getting half of the only face he owns shorn off by the jagged ice speeding underneath him, were shot in Cortina while the wides are on an artificial hill slope built on a soundstage where an unseen truck is literally just dragging these guys along. So, despite the fight he puts up, Ryan gets bested by his old arch-nemesis gravity, and he flails screaming into the night.

Footage of Ryan falling, screaming, into darkness. FADE TO:

Title: Kynette

In order to outrun Qualen and his dwindling henchmen to the third and final case, Gabe and Jessie take a shortcut through a bat cave, which ends up being every bit as bad an idea as it sounds. What you’re seeing here is one of only a handful of optical shots in the movie. The real bats are sectioned off by glass in much the same way the snakes are safely separated from Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the shark is not in Thunderball, as evidenced by the priceless look on Sean Connery’s face. Stallone and Turner absolutely refused to film with live bats, and frankly, who can blame them, so these bats were added in optically, and the two shots were merged. All the bats are real; the actors just aren’t there at the same time as the bats. They’re reacting to nothing in this shot, but it’s so well-done, it fooled me because this scene, and I mean completely, silenced any interest I had in spelunking not unlike the way Jaws became the reason I stopped swimming in the ocean.

First of all, it’s awesome that Kynette is shown to be Qualen’s best enforcer, the right hand; his most trusted and efficient, his Oddjob, his Karl, his Luca Brasi, and they have this great chemistry, Leon and Lithgow. From simple lines like this one:

Qualen’s line, “Give me the tracking monitor,” and Travers’ reply, “What are you going to do with it?” to Kynette’s, “Don’t make him ask you twice. Give it to him.” (00:30:41)

To this little character moment…

Qualen tosses a protein bar over his shoulder to Kynette. (00:57:55)

He trusts him to get the job done, and anytime we see that trust displayed, it’s really cool. Use footage from 01:07:45. No need for sound. The visual sells it. It’s too bad Leon didn’t have the kind of career I think he deserved because, once Ryan goes out, I feel like some sort of unspoken contest began on set between all the remaining villains to see which one of them could go just the craziest before they died, and while he doesn’t win that contest – more on that later – he does put in one for the record books.

Kynette is about as dangerous as they come in this: He’s the only one on the team with actual combat prowess, making him an example of one of my favorite action movie tropes: a character I refer to as The Surprise Black Belt. That’s what I call it anytime a villain unexpectedly breaks out Bruce Lee-level fight moves when the film up to this point has given us zero indication said character is capable of any such thing. You’ve seen it before, even if you don’t realize it: Derrick O’Connor from Lethal Weapon 2, Scott Adkins in the second Expendables, Eboni Adams from Blade, and my personal favorite, just because it’s the biggest head fake of them all, Patrick Wilson in The A-Team, who wails on Liam Neeson before giving one of the best lines in the movie:

Lynch’s, “Don’t let the scarf fool you; my Muay Thai’s pretty good,” from The A-Team

Now, hold on a second, I can already hear you say. Scott Adkins is one of the most well-known martial artists in the world. How can he be a Surprise Black Belt, you might ask. Well, if you recall, equally famous martial arts superstar Donnie Yen was in Blade 2 for no reason at all, and those guys from The Raid showed up in The Force Awakens and they didn’t do shit, either. My point is, I take nothing for granted, and neither should you.

Kynette is Cliffhanger’s, and that’s not even the half of it. He carries a bowie knife with a brass knuckle handle just in case you weren’t sufficiently convinced he’s unhinged, and when he learns Gabe and Jessie have burned the money in the second case, he loses the entirety of his shit. Just listen to the weird monologue he spouts off here:

Kynette’s speech, “It amazes me in this day and age when a man would put money before the personal safety of himself and his bitch.” (01:13:15)

What is he even talking about? And I’ve read the screenplay. This isn’t in it. Anywhere! This isn’t scripted; this is just Leon coming unspooled for thirty straight seconds, and it’s glorious! Him coming undone doesn’t save him, however, as in a fit of rage, Gabe is able to summon his strength and exploit Kynette’s one weakness – that he’ll die if you can put a humongous hole in his chest. Farewell, Kynette. You’ll be missed.

So while Gabe is busy perfecting his patented recipe for Villain on a Stick, Qualen and the gang, their patience exhausted, have set a bomb to blow the whole mountain to rubble because he’s nothing if not thorough, and this takes us into the tensest scene in the whole film. Let me break it down for you. One: In order to not be blown to smithereens, Gabe and Jessie have to rappel down using a sixty year-old rope they’ve unwoven and retied to grant them more length, thus making it considerably weaker. Two: That alone still isn’t enough. They have to swing around to the backside of the cliff where the explosion can’t reach them, and three: that bomb’s a-ticking. This scene is a perfect storm. The situation is dire, the odds are stacked against them, the only person who can save them – Frank – can’t see them, and Trevor Jones’ pulse-pounding score delivers pure, nail-biting adrenaline. I mean, just listen to this! (01:17:25 to 01:17:40)

And when the unthinkable happens, we’re right back at the beginning of the film, back at the site of Gabe’s greatest failure, the moment that’s haunted him for the last eight months. But this time, he’s able to save her and prevent history from repeating. It’s not inspired, but it is poetic, and a satisfying resolution to the guilt he’s carried all this time.

Title: Kristel

If Kynette is Qualen’s right hand, the calculating Kristel is his left, his Karla Frye. Even more trusted than Kynette, smarter and more proficient than all the others combined, it’s a wonder she’s not running the operation herself. She’s both an airplane and helicopter pilot, and is the sole reason the team survived the crash at all, having helmed the emergency landing on her own. Devious and deceptive beyond belief…

Kristel’s line, “Please, hurry! Billy’s going into shock. Please. We need insulin! Please, hurry!” (00:32:05)

She can wire deadly C4 explosives rigged for maximum carnage like she’s taking a stroll (01:14:22), a skill even Qualen doesn’t possess, based on his expression. (01:14:29)

Kristel’s line, “You should see me bake a cake.” (01:15:04)

With only one case left to go and their apparent inability to get Gabe to stop being alive starting to fray their nerves, Kristel lures Frank’s copter in with a signal flare. The ramp-up to this moment is terrible because we already know what’s going to happen. The movie knows this, too, so it draws out the whole ordeal, only making it worse. When Frank comes to their rescue, Kristel swipes his gun. The plan was just to steal his helicopter, but when Qualen, in a moment of sadism so concentrated, gives Hal a fighting chance to save Frank’s life, Delmar goes for the Asshole of the Year Award and guns him down in cold blood because, according to him:

Delmar’s line, “We’ve wasted enough time.” (01:20:29)

He kills the dad from The Waltons, man. Is it even possible to be more evil? But you know what? We’ll get to Delmar. Unlike the men, who are seven flavors of unstable, Kristel is the only member of the team that never lapses, never cracks, never fails to govern her emotions. It’s only when Delmar oversteps his bounds that she even raises her voice. She is in complete control at all times: brilliant, capable, and cold as the ice beneath her heels. I’m not the kind of guy that needs a cat fight, for lack of a better term, unless it’s Michelle Rodriguez going head-to-head with a female bad guy in the Fast and Furious movies (Rodriguez vs. Carano in 6 and Rousey in 7), but I’m a little let down that this film couldn’t figure out a way for Kristel to have a helicopter duel with Jessie. Is that just me? I mean, it was right there. No. Sadly, as awesome as Kristel is, her one weakness would appear to be love, which earns her a bullet in the back from Qualen when his stranglehold on Travers starts to slip and he’s forced to reassert his position as top dog.

I like to think if they’d just done everything her way, they’d all be getting tanned on a beach somewhere, sipping mai tais with $100 million in their Cayman account instead of lying murdered on the sides of several mountains in Colorado. Oh, well…

Title: Delmar

Delmar is… the worst. He’s pitiless and ill-tempered, short-fused, and kinda racist.

Delmar’s line, “Good. And blow out that black bastard while you’re at it. Save me the time to do it meself.” (01:10:56)

As far as I can tell, he actually seems to take pleasure in hurting people. And the scariest thought is he might be the one person there who isn’t doing this for the money.

Delmar’s line, “Fuck the money, and fuck you!” (00:56:34)

Part of me feels like he took this job just because there was a chance he might get to torture someone. But with all that in mind, even he doesn’t take the gold in the Y’all Gon’ Make Me Lose My Mind Championship that comprises the latter half of this film. What he does do, however, is subject us to a prolonged scene of malicious brutality that honestly gets a little difficult to watch. When Travers sets off to collect the third and final case, now that they no longer have need of him, Delmar is left behind to dispose of Hal with only the instruction to do it quietly. Does he, though? Nah. Not even. Instead, Delmar launches into a deranged and protracted piece of performance art, a bizarre and unnerving open mic on his love of soccer, and I’m not making that up.

Delmar’s line, “Tell me. You like soccer? It’s a great sport.” (01:27:25)

Here’s another thing I will never get tired of. I love that moment in any action film when two characters cross one another early on, and you know from that instant, the two of them are going to throw down before it’s all over. And I hate to refer to the Fast and Furious series again, but I have to because that franchise has this trope down to a science. This moment between Brian and Vegh from Furious 6…

The wink Vegh gives Brian in passing when he’s upside down in the tunnel

…and this bit with Tony Jaa from 7…

Tony Jaa’s line, “Too slow,” before exiting the out-of-control bus

…both foreshadow sensational Third Act showdowns. It’s the kind of closure we crave, even

unconsciously. We may not always know we want it but we definitely notice when it’s not there. It’s the reason why the off-screen death of Josh Brolin’s Llewellyn Moss in No Country for Old Men comes as such a shock. Or why the car crash that kills Daniel Kaluuya’s Jatemme in Widows feels so dissatisfying. It’s because, as viewers, we long for justice, for balance, and it strikes at our moral equilibrium when that justice is denied us.

There are older, greater examples, for certain. The whip-smart gun-spinning exhibition between Michael Biehn’s Johnny Ringo and Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in Tombstone; the look on the face of Derrick O’Connor’s Vorstedt in Lethal Weapon 2 during this brief but tense exchange in Arjen Rudd’s office; the maze trial in From Russia With Love wherein we learn Robert Shaw’s SPECTRE assassin Red Grant has been training tirelessly in order to hunt down and at last kill James Bond for the death of Dr. No.

Or this one from John Wick 3: Parabellum, which goes so far as to subvert the trope by having Mark Dacascos’ Zero overwhelmed with genuine awe and admiration, legitimately fan-girling when he finally gets to meet the man he’s going to kill.

Zero’s line, “I gotta tell you. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a long time. I’m a huge fan. John Wick! And so far, you haven’t disappointed!”

There are so many more, and I love each and every one of them, but the inevitable showdown between Tucker and Delmar has been building practically since they met. He has menaced Hal specifically for the duration of the film, killed his friends and loved ones, threatened, taunted, and abused him whenever it suited him, and even now with leave to end his life, he doesn’t, instead opting to prolong Tucker’s misery by kicking the tar out of him as he rambles on about his apparent missed opportunity to go pro in his youth. Everybody loses their mind in this, and their breakdowns are like fingerprints, with each one being wholly unique to the man going mad. Unfortunately for Delmar, Hal concealed Frank’s knife as he lay dying in his arms and pays him back in kind for every awful thing he’s done before offering up the applause-worthy line:

Tucker’s line, “Season’s over, asshole!” (01:28:54)

…and that’s when we all learned that Delmar could fly… but only straight down.

Title: Travers

Okay, we made it. This is the one we’ve been working toward. With the finish line in his sights, Travers tracks the final case to its location to discover that not only has Gabe managed to beat him to it again, he’s tied the tracking beacon to a snowshoe hare just to mess with him, and that is one offense too many for our boy. And when I say he loses it, he loses it big. Travers gets on the radio and launches into a swear-filled lather that is so foul-mouthed that if you censored it, it would just sound like a dial tone.

Use any of Travers’ lines from the scene. Let him say one or two words at the beginning then bleep the rest as a continuous tone. Maybe let one random word interrupt the tone before it begins again. It’d be funny if the one unbleeped word is “Qualen.”

He admonishes Qualen, he berates his master plan, he marvels at how two mountain rangers took it all apart, he even kicks himself for ever agreeing to the operation in the first place. He does it all! On the other end of the radio, Qualen tries to talk him down, but he’s not having it. My man is just over it. All of it. I love the look on his face, how the camera spins around him. (01:31:36) I’m amazed Rex Linn didn’t pull something shooting this scene, because he goes all in. And just so you know it’s over and he’s never coming back, either physically or mentally, he gives us this line:

Travers’ line, “I gotta go. I’m on my last official manhunt. Adios, motherfucker!” 01:31:46

Something incredible happens to some villains when they know they’re beat, when they know they’ve lost. Some of them just break, and whatever the original plan was goes out the window because it doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters now is killing the ones who cost them everything. You’ve seen it before: By the time Karl draws his rifle at the end of Die Hard, the Nakatomi hostages are safe, the heist has failed, and Hans Gruber is paving the sidewalk with his face; there is literally nothing left to win. Nothing to gain. All that matters to Karl now is that John McLane die. Hard. And there’s the surprise climax of Aliens, wherein the Queen stows aboard the Marines’ dropship in order to tear Ripley limb from limb for cooking all of her disgusting children back in the outpost. Again, there’s no victory here; only revenge. Only spite. It even happens in Disney films, like in the climax set within the gears of Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective, when after a whole film of attempting to convince himself and the world he’s more than just a rat, Ratigan goes snakehouse and turns rabid in a vicious, not entirely appropriate for children effort to put Basil of Baker Street into his grave.

Well, Travers does a proper one here, pursuing Gabe to a bridge over a frozen river so the two of them can finally have it out. This scene doesn’t quite match up with the rest of the footage shot in the mountains, and Harlin himself admits as much. He has expressed his disappointment with it, stating that the logistics of filming in freezing water beneath a sheet of ice were nightmarish. For this reason, the skirmish wasn’t shot in Cortina; it was filmed on a soundstage in Rome, with Stallone swimming in a tank under a fiberglass plate styled to look like ice. It’s a little distracting; at the end of the day more closely resembling something from The Chronicles of Narnia than an R-rated beat ‘em up prominently showcasing machine guns and hardcore criminals.

Ultimately, it’s a bolt gun of the kind we’ve seen Gabe and Hal use throughout the film that does Travers in, which requires some suspension of disbelief as those climbing devices don’t really exist, and if they did, they wouldn’t work that way. The film contains a number of rock climbing and mountaineering inaccuracies, such as the theatrical, over-the-top athletics (01:32:40) and some of the equipment, which is superfluous at best, but by far the item that most gets real-life climbers’ ropes in a tangle is the largely fictitious bolt gun Gabe and Hal use to just fire titanium rods straight into the mountain face. (00:38:22 and 01:16:14) It’s not hard to understand why such a device was created for the film; real bolt climbing is a tedious process that requires sites be scouted thoroughly, establishing the integrity of the rock before drilling several inches into it. Only then can the bolt be placed, secured with resin, and finally hammered into position. A tool like the bolt gun, were it real, would merely shatter the rock when fired into it. The true method is effective but slow, and frankly, just not feasible from a filmmaking standpoint. Not when so much of the action relies

on tension and shortness of time.

Little blonde girl’s line, “And now we know,” and Spirit’s response, “And knowing is half the battle,” followed by the GI Joe theme and logo

Anyway, with Gabe and Hal reunited and the maniac formerly known as Travers floating south for the winter, it’s at last time for the main event.

Title: Qualen

So, as we enter the final showdown, Gabe and Hal have the last case of $30 million in a rucksack and Qualen has Jessie hostage in Frank’s helicopter, which makes this a great time to consider the road not traveled. It’s hard to imagine what another actor might have done in this role, in Lithgow’s place, because the truth is, John Lithgow wasn’t Renny Harlin’s first choice to play Qualen. Honestly, he wasn’t even his second. Christopher Walken was. And I don’t even have a joke here. Walken is immensely capable. He’s played some unbelievable villains in his day: Super soldier Max Zorin from A View to a Kill, the dual sword-wielding Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow, Sicilian mobster Vincenzo Ciccotti from True Romance, the best Quentin Tarantino movie not directed by Quentin Tarantino ever, and my personal favorite, the notorious Frank White from King of New York, which is an awesome flick. He’s got the chops. He’s got what it takes, and it isn’t a stretch to imagine him gradually going insane right alongside the other members of this team, but as I said, Walken was Harlin’s second choice.

His first choice was none other than David Bowie, and I’m just gonna let you think about that for a moment while you look at this footage of him as Nikola Tesla from Christopher Nolan’s astonishing period piece about dueling 19th Century magicians, The Prestige.

Shot of Bowie entering through the wall of electricity.

I don’t even think those are special effects; that’s just what it looked like whenever David Bowie entered a room. I’m a firm believer in the idea of a Multiverse, that every decision you make creates another reality where you didn’t make that choice, and the thought of a reality existing somewhere with David Bowie as Eric Qualen, where he has a fist fight with Sylvester Stallone atop the wreckage of a helicopter suspended from the side of a mountain is enough to keep me up at night. Don’t get me wrong. Lithgow owns this part, and I wouldn’t change his casting for anything. He may not have been the first choice, but he was the right one, but I’ll always wonder what could have been.

Qualen doesn’t go nearly as nuts as his henchmen when Gabe hurls the bag holding the last of the money into the helicopter’s blades, officially putting a nail in the coffin of his master plan, but he does try to dice him to ribbons with its rotors, which results in the copter losing altitude and crashing into the mountainside, setting the perfect stage for their final fight. My favorite spots for a fight scene are always someplace high up and preferably structurally unstable. I could make an entire video series on epic showdowns a thousand feet off the ground, and this one’s loads of fun. Lithgow goes on an improvised tirade, filling Gabe’s ear with all manner of craziness the whole while.

Qualen’s line, “We had a deal. Now we’ve just got each other!” (01:42:40)

Now, you would have to go into the Multiverse to find a world where John Lithgow can beat Sly Stallone in a fist fight, but this one feels believable as he’s so stark-raving furious with Gabe by this point, anything becomes possible, so you still very much fear for him. If I have one complaint about this fight, it’s that the helicopter explodes when it hits the ground after falling free of the cliff, which makes no kind of sense, but the simple fact of the matter is this movie spends nearly the entirety of its runtime earning your favor, getting in your good graces, so when this bit of pyrotechnic illogicality finally comes, you’re riding so high, you just kinda go with it, and that’s pretty damn admirable.

I need a song here. I just haven’t figured out which one I want it to be yet

Title: The Summer of 1993

I was very young when Cliffhanger came out. I had just started my first job as a concession stand attendant at my local movie theater, a position I truthfully considered leaving as my very first night on the job was the Friday Jurassic Park opened, and that was every bit as huge a deal as you think. The lines were ten needy and demanding customers deep at every register, I had little training if any at all, and I was not enjoying myself. Not yet, leastwise. Anyone who’s ever worked in a movie theater knows the only real benefit is you get to watch everything for free, oftentimes before the public does.

1993 was kind of an amazing year for film. Schindler’s List, Mrs. Doubtfire, Falling Down, Groundhog Day, Demolition Man, The Sandlot, Sleepless in Seattle, Carlito’s Way, True Romance, Tombstone, The Fugitive, which you already know I loved. So many great movies came out that year, and I tried to watch every one of them. It got to the point where I would spend my days off in the theater; it became my home away from home. I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had at that job. I didn’t realize it at first, but I’d fallen in love with it, with the feeling of getting lost in a story, with surrendering your attention and emotions to the dark for two hours and change with only the flickering bulb and the warm hum of the projector above to bring those stories to life.

Before I knew anything about directors or cinematography or editing or any of that, I remember this movie just being good. I remember that it just… worked. On every level that mattered. And I think even now, every time I go see something new, I’m still hoping to recapture a little of that one afternoon when Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone took on a mountain and won. I actually ended up running that theater several years later, and while I’m not there anymore, in a way, I kinda always will be. See you next time.

Hey, everybody. Well, that got kind of emotional there at the end. Didn’t see that coming. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to Tangent 1985. You can give us a Like, leave a comment, or just share us with your friends. We’re on Twitter, too, so be sure to ring the bell so you never miss an update. I gotta get out of here. Be good.