Review: Cliffhanger

Movie: Cliffhanger

Main Actors: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow and Michael Rooker (For a complete list see IMDB)

MPAA Rating: R

Passionate Expressions: Funny enough, there is no language used when you would think they would use them, they just scream a lot.

Useless Vulgar Language: Pretty much any language in this movie falls under this category. Language is used when not necessary and the few times that you would think people would actually curse, it is used as part of a catch phrase or with the actor saying something funny.

Sex in a Good Light: Non-Existent

Sex in a Bad Light: Non-Existent

Manly Violence: If the early Stallone movie’s were about anything it was about manly violence. There is so much of this that I can’t mention it here, it would take way to long. There are explosions, rock climbing and falling, shooting, freezing, airplane crashes, death by icicles and everything was tied into the plot, had a consequence and was a part of the story line. In other words: AWESOME. I’ll have more on this in the Review Segment.

Action Violence: I don’t think there was any.

Pointless Violence: Again, a lot of people might say that the whole movie was pointless. I disagree, it was pretty clean of pointless violence.

Manly Rating: A

Scorecard
Cinematography: A
Visual Effects: B
Sound/Score: B
Story: A
Acting: B+

Food to Watch With: Something light, like water and a Granola Bar so after the movie you can head outside and climb something (or at least act like your going to).

Plot Synopsis: A bank Robber (Lithgow) attempts to steal a shipment of money while in transit on an airplane over Colorado. It of course fails and they crash. The bad guys spend the rest of the movie fighting an issue packed team of mountain rangers in an attempt to gather their lost bags of money.

Review: Is this a great movie: Yes. Is this one of my favorite movies: Yes. Would I watch this movie with my wife: No. Sometimes the Manly men they (wives) want us to be does not translate very well in a movie and this is one of them, especially if your wife is more sensitive to Violence and Peril. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you to be manly like the guys in the movie, it just means that the movie was meant to portray the manliness to you, not to her. I said that I would talk more about the Manly Violence above so here it goes. There is a scene in the movie where Stallone’s character impales a guy who is trying to kill him and his girl, on something pointy hanging from the cave they are in. This gave me pause when I was assigning Violence ratings. How could this not be Pointless Violence. He is literally driving a man upwards onto a spike. Gruesome. But, he didn’t have any other weapons at the moment and the guy was trying to kill not just him but the woman he loves. What was he supposed to do, excuse himself from the cave so he could find a more civilized means of killing him. Nope. I tried to put myself in his shoes and if for some reason I find myself locked in mortal combat with an evil villain who is trying to kill me and my wife in a cave and I had no gun or knife and I was super-humanly strong, I would do the same thing.

On another note: Cliffhanger is one of the few movies that attained a high level of success that was almost entirely filmed in the wild. It is worth watching just for the scenery and to watch what they put these actors through. I’ll give it kudos just for that.

Life Lessons: There is always forgiveness (sometimes you just need to kill a few bad guys to find it) and even seemingly benign guys like John Lithgow can make kick-butt evil masterminds.

Summary: If you’re a guy, watch it, but unless your significant other has a very high tolerance for violence, watch it with other guys only.

Would I Watch This Again: I’ve never been able to turn it down and I don’t think I ever will.