Cliffhanger: Collector's Edition (1993)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Audio Commentary-Renny Harlin (Director) & Sylvester Stallone (Actor) Audio Commentary-Frank Urioste (Editor) et al Gallery-Photo-22 Listing-Crew Featurette-Making Of-Stallone On The Edge (20:00) Deleted Scenes-2 Featurette-Special Effects: How It Was Done Storyboard Comparisons-3 Introduction-Renny Harlin (Director) Scene Selection Anim & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	108:04 (Case: 112)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (51:34)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Renny Harlin
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Sylvester Stallone
Case	Soft Brackley-Opaque
RPI	$36.95	Music	Trevor Jones

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish French Norwegian Danish Finnish Icelandic Swedish Hebrew Spanish Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, extended pull-back at start of end credits

    Gabriel ('Gabe') Walker (Sylvester Stallone) works for the Rocky Mountains Rescue Service. His job is to rescue stranded climbers. His 'partners-in-crime' include Hal Tucker (Michael Rooker), Jessie Deighan (Janine Turner) and Frank (Ralph Waite). Hal takes his girlfriend on a treacherous mountain climb, but becomes stranded high atop the Rockies. Gabe comes to their rescue, but things go wrong, prompting Gabe to leave the Rockies for a time.

    Cut to the US Treasury in Denver, where Richard Travers (Rex Linn) is set to escort a large shipment of $1,000 bills on a high security flight. Unfortunately, the plane is hijacked, but things don't exactly go to plan for the hijackers, lead by the villain-of-villains, Qualen (played with relish by John Lithgow). They crash-land, sans money, in the Rocky Mountains. Fortunately for the baddies, the suitcases containing the money have tracking devices inside them, and one of the baddies has the tracking unit. They need a tracker to help them find the suitcases in the mountains, and unfortunately Gabe (conveniently just returned to the Rockies) and Hal are treacherously turned to this task.

    What follows is a desperate race to the suitcases. However, the plot really plays second fiddle here to the spectacular action sequences, and the awesome cinematography. If you really sat down and analysed the plot, you'd have a field day picking the inconsistencies and continuity faults in this movie. It's easier to simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    Sharpness is generally superb throughout, with a gorgeous array of fine detail on offer in the image. This is the area of the transfer which is most improved over the previous version of Cliffhanger. Whilst the previous transfer was very good, this one surpasses it in its ability to resolve fine image detail. It is, however, worth noting that the last half of the movie looks significantly sharper than the first half of the movie.

    Shadow detail is in general quite good, although most locations are brightly lit, so there is not much opportunity for the transfer to shine in this area. The spectacular opening sequence suffered very slightly from grain, but I suspect that this is inherent in the source material. The previously-released Cliffhanger transfer was the same in this regard.

    Colours are vivid and nicely saturated. Most importantly, there is no colour bleed, even in shots which are predominantly white.

    Impressively, there is no aliasing in this transfer. Given the level of detail on offer, this is a pleasant surprise. There are also no MPEG artefacts to be seen. There are a few film artefacts visible, but none are overly distracting.

    This disc is RSDL-formatted. The layer change is placed in Chapter 8, at 51:34. It is dreadfully placed. Mid-scene, it interrupts both the panning visual action and the smoothly flowing orchestral accompaniment. This is one of the worst-placed layer changes I have ever seen, right up with shockers like the one in Dune: Special Edition.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are four audio tracks on this DVD; English, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Audio Commentary track. I listened to the English soundtrack and the Audio Commentary track.

    Dialogue is mostly clear and easy to understand, within the limits imposed by Sylvester Stallone's slur. The opening sequence is a tad problematic dialogue-wise, with the aggressively mixed score and sound effects requiring concentration on the centre channel in order to discern the dialogue.

    Audio sync is a significant problem for this transfer, with a good 10 minutes of this DVD being noticeably out of sync at around the 40 minute mark. Some of this can be attributed to poor ADR work, but I suspect at least some of this issue is transfer-induced. The two passages most noticeably out of sync were a passage in the airplane from 38:04 to 38:46 and a passage from 40:30 onwards. In comparison, the previously released version of Cliffhanger was not as far out of sync as this version.

    The music for this movie was provided by Trevor Jones. Lushly orchestral, its themes tended to become a tad repetitive as the movie progressed.

    The surround channels were aggressively used by this soundtrack for the majority of the movie. There was near-constant surround activity, and numerous instances of aggressive and split use of the rear surround channels for special effects and music. Interestingly, the musical score was mixed such that you were placed in approximately the position of the orchestra's conductor - violins to the left of you and brass to the right. This very wide soundfield was, if anything, a little too wide and distracting for my liking, as was some of the extremely aggressive surround sound placement. Some of the sound effects mixing was so over-the-top that it tended to distract from the visual image with a "ping-pong" surround audio feel rather than a more integrated feel. Regardless of this, this remains a very good example of aggressive surround sound use.

    The subwoofer was a tad too loud. The dominant bass suited the on-screen explosions and gunshots, but was a little over-the-top for many of the quieter orchestral moments. A few db less in the LFE channel would have gone down well.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    Many of the featurettes annoyingly have French subtitles default to ON. The arbitrarily truncated Dolby Digital trailer in the menu introduction is also quite annoying.

Scene Selection Animation & Audio

Filmographies-Cast & Crew

Theatrical Trailer - 1.66:1 not 16x9 enhanced DD 2.0 (1:59)

Theatrical Trailer - How It Was Produced (3:23)

Audio Commentary - Renny Harlin (Director) & Sylvester Stallone (Actor)

    A few scattered crackles and pops mar the commentary slightly.

Audio Commentary - Frank Urioste (Editor), Neil Krepela (Co-Visual Effects Supervisor), John Bruno (Co-Visual Effects Supervisor) & John Vallone (Production Designer)

    Frank Urioste speaks first, with his comments often bearing little relation to the on-screen action. Some of what he has to say is interesting, but most of it is sadly not. Neil Krepela and John Bruno make many screen-specific comments about many of the special effects sequences. Their comments are screen-specific and are often extremely interesting. A word of warning, though - they go into a lot of detail when explaining how certain shots and effects were achieved. If you don't want to know the answer to "how did they do that?", then don't listen to this commentary! John Vallone's comments are variably screen-specific and variably interesting.

    All-in-all, this is a commentary track worth listening to, but you do have to endure a fair degree of irrelevancy to make it through to the gems of information.

Photo Galleries

Crew-Listing

Featurette-Stallone On The Edge-The Making Of Cliffhanger (20:00)

Deleted Scenes-2 + Introduction

Featurette-Special Effects-How It Was Done

Storyboard Comparisons (3)

Featurette-Director's Introduction

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

• Trailer for The Lords Of Flatbush
• Production Notes Booklet
• More photos

    The video transfer on this DVD is stunning, and it is a pity that less-than-perfect audio sync and occasionally excessive bass mar the soundtrack.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall