By Jake Lever

There’s an old joke, there are three types of mathematicians, those who can count, and those who can’t. Well, in Hollywood, there are only two types of directors: those who specialize in dealing with actors and making the lighting schemes part of the plot and those who specialize in dealing with huge explosions and vast numbers of extras running away from computer generated animals or asteroids. Very rarely do directors stray very from their bases. Finnish director Renny Harlin is emphatically, defiantly, and pronouncedly a member of the latter group of directors.

Born in Riihimäki, Finland on March 15, 1959, Harlin is the son of a prison doctor. Always interested in film, Harlin attended film school in Helsinki and was instantly rejected by his classmates. Harlin explains it was his commercial tendencies that caused him to be labeled an outsider… as well as the reason he has become a bankable director in Hollywood. Soon after dropping out of film school, Harlin directed a small Chuck Norris movie called Born American, and moved to southern California. After the equally small budgeted Prison, Harlin was given the opportunity to direct New Line’s Nightmare on Elm Street 4. Nightmare on Elm Street 4 landed him The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and then Die Hard 2. With Die Hard 2’s enormous success, the reins to Hollywood were Harlin’s.

Throughout his life though, Harlin’s commercial sensibility has always come in to play. On Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Harlin made the film for the astonishing low sum of $6.5 million (the film took in nearly $50 million). What was most impressive about this wasn’t just the low sum of money, but the amazing stunts and action Harlin was able to film with such a low sum of money.

Nightmare on Elm Street 4’s surprise $50 million box office also ended the small budget portion of Harlin’s career. These new larger budgets didn’t necessarily mean his actors got any better, but most definitely ensured that the stunts and action sequences in his films could grow to those of epic proportions.

This can be seen extremely well in Harlin’s 1993 action film, Cliffhanger.

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Cliffhanger was the story of a rescue team of mountain climbers who are forced to help a corrupt FBI agent and several mercenaries find 3 briefcases filled with $100 million dollars that are strewn across the Rocky Mountains. The dialogue is bad, Stallone’s acting is bad, and, to make matters worse, the storyline itself is pretty unbelievable. However, I couldn’t in good conscience tell you that you shouldn’t watch the film.

Filmed in the Italian Alps, a smaller, apparently more manageable range of mountains that the Rockies, Harlin approached principal photography wanting to make this movie bigger, better and even louder than his previous film, Die Hard 2; an impressive goal to say the least.

Throughout the shoot, Harlin continually pushed the envelope on what his production team could and could not do.

As Cliffhanger opens, the viewer is greeted with just that: a well-built man hanging off the underside of an enormously high cliff. This makes twice impression it normally would because it is obvious that there are no blue screens or matte paintings involved in this shot: Harlin has actually captured someone climbing up the face of a mountain with no visible safety wires.

From there, the camera follows the flight of a rescue helicopter and, in one continuous take, zooms in onto actors Michael Rooker and Michelle Joyner, who were stranded atop one of the tallest outcroppings in the vicinity. Again, the impact of this shot is great because the actors are actually stuck out on the ledge. Rooker recalls that in order to get that one single shot, he and Joyner were forced to sit on the ledge for over an hour while the helicopters maneuvered in tandem to get the shot just right.

However, Harlin has repeatedly said that he does not expect his actors to do anything that he himself would not do. Bearing that in mind, before filming Cliffhanger’s rescue attempt of Rooker and Joyner, Harlin strapped himself into a harness and took the plunge, pulling himself hand over hand across a four thousand foot ravine on a cable, from one mountain top to another mountain top nearby, just as Stallone and Rooker were to do in the yet-unshot scene.

With the release of the Cliffhanger DVD, the efforts of Harlin’s labor can be seen on screen in full effect. The acting is bad, the plot is full of holes (as are the bad guys at the end of the movie), but Harlin’s desire to director really large scale action film makes this an experience to remember.

"My motto is: If you build it, you either have to burn it down or blow it up," Harlin laughs. "Otherwise it’s just a waste of money."

Well spoken, Renny.