Cliffhanger

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.

A middling but frequently thrilling action spectacle, Cliffhanger divided critics mostly along the line of whether its genuinely impressive mountain stunts could compensate for a weak script and cartoonish villains — and that's a debate that started publicly between Ebert and Siskel and never fully resolved. Stallone's physicality and the Alpine set-pieces drew real admiration, while Lithgow's strained English accent and the film's implausible mountaineering details became easy targets. Its Oscar nominations for technical craft and simultaneous Razzie nominations for screenplay and supporting cast neatly capture just how split the response was.