Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, former ranger Gabe Walker and his partner, Hal, are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money.
Cliffhanger delivers spectacular Rocky Mountain cinematography that genuinely earns top marks — the vertiginous climbing sequences and snow-swept vistas are strikingly captured. Acting is serviceable with Stallone doing his stoic hero thing and John Lithgow chewing scenery enjoyably as the villain. The plot is formulaic action-thriller territory — a thin premise stretched to feature length with predictable beats and cardboard supporting characters. Novelty gets a mild bump for its distinctive mountain-climbing action setting, which gave the genre a fresh physical backdrop even if the Die Hard-in-the-mountains blueprint wasn't especially original. The ending resolves in a thoroughly by-the-numbers fashion with little tension or surprise.