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Cliffhanger film

Cliffhanger film: Encyclopedia - Cliffhanger film

Cliffhanger is a 1993 action movie directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a climber who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in the Rocky Mountains. The film was nominated for Worst Picture in the 1993 Golden Raspberry Awards and is considered unrealistic in many aspects by the climbing community. However, the film was a hit when ...

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Cliffhanger film - Cast

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Cliffhanger film: Encyclopedia - Cliffhanger film

Cliffhanger (film)

Cliffhanger is a 1993 action movie directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a climber who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in the Rocky Mountains.

The film was nominated for Worst Picture in the 1993 Golden Raspberry Awards and is considered unrealistic in many aspects by the climbing community. However, the film was a hit when it was released, making more than $250 million worldwide.

Cliffhanger is also 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 4,572 m (15,000 ft).

A climber (played by Stallone) loses his confidence after a rescue goes wrong, resulting in the death of his friend's girlfriend. Stallone is then called back to perform a final rescue by his ex-girlfriend and overcomes his inner demons to help the bitter ex-friend with the rescue.

During the rescue, the two climbers are taken prisoner by ruthless thieves, lead by John Lithgow, who stole (but subsequently lost) $100 million belonging to the US Treasury. These thieves carried out a daring airplane-to-airplane transfer of the funds; but, during the transfer, a gun battle among them led to the loss of the money and the crash of the planes. The suitcases holding the money had beacon locators. Because the money was lost in mountainous territory, the rescue climbers are taken prisoner and coerced into locating the money.

The movie features an interesting device called the bolt-gun, which fires bolts directly into rock, forgoing the usual rock-drilling and bolt-hammering used in rock-climbing. At the same time ignoring certain material properties of rock that should cause the bolt-gun's impact site to shatter and explode with flaky projectiles, the bolt-gun is usually cited as one of the film's most serious technical inaccuracies.

The movie's most breathtaking scenes were shot in the Cortina d'Ampezzo area of the Dolomites, Italy.