In the late '80s and early '90s, two heavyweight action stars battled it out for box office supremacy. While Arnold Schwarzenegger was creating action-genre classics fighting alien predators and sentient killing machines, Sylvester Stallone travelled a rockier road (pun intended), paved with tired sequels and movies destined to be forgotten failures, like the Stallone-penned Cobra. But 1993's Cliffhanger breathed new life into Stallone's career. With its absurd story and even more absurd action set pieces, Cliffhanger's over-the-top (pun intended again) thrills and cheesy one-liners keeps this no-brainer action flick fun and watchable.

The opening scene is a perfect allegory for the entire film. A soaring shot of bleached Rocky Mountains lands on Stallone free climbing a treacherous mountain face. He reaches the top where he meets Hal and Sarah, who are somehow trapped on a summit the size of a pin head. For whatever reason, Stallone attempts to rescue them via a wire stretched between two peaks. Tragedy strikes when Sarah's clip breaks, leaving her dangling thousands of feet above certain doom, and Stallone rushes on the line to save her. But he fails. The impressive wide shot of Sarah slipping out of Stallone's hand is quickly overshadowed by the horribly fake rear screen projection shot that follows it. And that's Cliffhanger in a nut shell -- a ridiculous situation solved with another ridiculous solution and a couple of jaw-dropping shots on the side of a gorgeous mountain quickly followed by some laughable special effects.

Somehow the film's mashing together of pretty awful and pretty good works, making it even more relevant today than when it was released. 15 years ago, Cliffhanger was just another action movie with a goofy tagline and a trailer that ripped off Die Hard. The story of a Rocky Mountain rescuer (Stallone) forced to help a band of criminals find lost cases of money on a mountainside hardly made a dent in the saturated action market. Today, the story isn't much better, but the uneven execution of its predictable plot devices and action make it a near parody of the '90s action genre. Cliffhanger has all the action staples -- overly dramatic slow motion deaths, wince-inducing quips ("It cost a fortune to heat this place," said while burning money for a fire), stereotypical characters, and overacting from the likes of Michael Rooker as Hal, the distraught mountain rescue has-been, and John Lithgow, the evil villain.

That's not to say that Cliffhanger set out to be a self-aware collection of action clichés; it just happens to be out of dumb luck. There's no overlooking director Renny Harlin's inconsistent visual tone as he flips from on-location scenes to studio shots with little concern for authenticity. One minute you have a scene of Stallone sliding down a wintery slope that looks like it was filmed in Harlin's backyard on a snow-covered slip 'n slide, and the next moment a helicopter crashes against the side of a mountain with convincing realism. For as bad as some of the action is, it adds to the film's charm.

For those who loved '90s action movies with a frenzied pace and enough explosions to distract from the horrible plot and acting, Cliffhanger is a fun return to the days of high-octane action. Sure, the "characters" are just bodies to shoot, impale on a stalactite, blow up, throw off a mountain, etc., but that's why we go to action movies, to see good triumph over the bad with an endless clip of bullets. In the end, Cliffhanger's action good, as goofy it might be, overshadows its production bad.

The Blu-ray includes two commentary tracks, a few deleted scenes, several making-of featurettes (who knew so much of the movie was shot on a sound stage?), and a movieIQ feature.