SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent, a Must See

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

"The Eiger Sanction" is basically a Bond movie with the assassin now an ageing art professor coaxed out of retirement to perform one last "sanction", or murder. His boss, who doubles as the villain, is almost too ridiculous for 007 - he's a "pure albino" who can only exist under red light and has to get his blood periodically transfused so that he can go on living!The "Eiger" of the title is a dangerous mountain and our professor- assassin also happens to be an expert climber who failed to reach the summit of the mountain's most dangerous slope once before, so, you know, this time it's personal. They also throw in that most tired of action movie clichés: The hero is given the mission, refuses it, then finds out some extra piece of information that means he can't just walk away...At one point the professor-assassin (yes, I find that a particularly ridiculous juxtaposition) actually asks why he wasn't made aware of the salient fact in the first place, and I must confess I was wondering that too. The movie doesn't provide an answer. Cliché for cliché's sake?The lengthy rock climbing scenes, which generate tension in moments, are in striking contrast with the movie's ridiculous opening. Showing men against nature can't help but clash with men against mutant albinos. The fact that the movie is also about 30 minutes overlong suggests that the beginning was added as an afterthought, perhaps by an outside influence. Either way, we get parts that don't add up, a beginning that let's down the ending, rather than the other way around.I also ought to say something about the movie's weird stereotyping of minorities. There's a beautiful, treacherous black girl who dazzles the hero with her sexuality and makes off with his payment, and a beautiful, treacherous Native American girl called George who dazzles the hero with her sexuality and drugs him with a syringe... did I mention the Bond movie similarities? Lastly, there's an outrageously camp gay guy with a lap dog called "Faggot" who keeps a body builder around as a boy toy and also gets offed, if not romanced, by the hero. I'm not sure what to make of any of that; obviously as a macho man hero of an action movie, he has to get laid by the ladies and approached by the gays, but why go out of the way to make these characters all so bizarre?

Clint Eastwood both directed and stars in this spy-type thriller as a classical art teacher, collector, and professional assassin(!) named Jonathan Hemlock who has been called upon to come out of retirement to avenge the death of a friend and former colleague, which leads him to a mountain climbing group as the prime suspects, helped by its guide(played by George Kennedy) who must climb the treacherous Eiger mountain to uncover the truth... Failed attempt at a thriller only has attractive scenery to compensate for the poorly plotted and overlong story that moves quite slowly, cluttered with too many bizarre characters. A real misfire from Eastwood.

Wonderfully photographed story dealing with betrayal , secret agents action , greed and killings . A classical art professor and collector called Jonathan (Clint Eastwood went on a three-day climbing course in Yosemite National Park, then practiced at home for several months) , Hamlock (it is a venom , no less) who doubles as a professional assassin, is coerced out of retirement to avenge the murder of an old friend . He is assigned by Dragon (Thayer David) to discover a killer during a dangerous mountain climbing (in which Clint Eastwood preformed the sequence where his character hangs off the side of a mountain by a cable himself without the use of a stunt doublé) . Meanwhile , a treacherous , gay spy (Jack Cassidy) deceives Hamlock , but the latter seeks vengeance . The premise is the following : one of his team is a killer but who? This thrilling film has suspense , noisy action , outrageously overblown roles , tension and extraordinary climbing images . Beautiful Swiss Alps scenery falls to partially compensate for several dreary lapses , faults , ungodly length (128 minutes) and script's shortcomings . Based on novel by Trevanian , though novelist Rod Whitaker (Trevanian) scorned the film as "vapid" and blamed the production for "the death of a promising young climber" . The shoot marked the last time that anyone was allowed to climb the "Totem Pole" in Monument Valley , in return for permission to film there, climbers with the production had to remove all of the pitons, which had accumulated from years of climbing, on their way down. Exciting final climax does not make up for movies's various gaps and flaws . Clint is pretty good as a college professor by day and superagent by night sent to expose a murderer during a risked mountain climb . Clint Eastwood did all of his own stunts, including the scene where he cuts his safety line over a drop of at least one thousand feet ; the only stunt he did not perform was a 2500-foot drop, for which a dummy was used . He is well accompanied by George Kennedy because of the friendship that they had formed on their previous picture, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Good as well as international support cast playing brief interpretations and with silly names , such as Vonetta McGee , Jack Cassidy , Heidi Brühl , Thayer David , Reiner Schöne and special mention to Gregory Walcott as Pope . Very real climbing images as well as perfectly staged scenes , being marvelously photographed in Panavisión by Frank Stanley , he fills the screen with excitement and suspense ; showing outrageously mountain outdoors . Atmospheric and evocative musical score by the great John Williams , pre-Spielberg collaboration .This pseudo-James Bond flick was professionally directed by Clint Eastwood , though being overlong and contains some faults . Filmmaker Eastwood better known for his ¨Dirty Harry¨ series such as : The enforcers , Sudden impact , Deed pool ; he subsequently directed his overtly personal movies such as Unforgiven , The Bridges of Madison County , Mystic River , Million Dollar Baby , Changeling and Gran Torino . The Eiger sanction results to be one of just a handful of Clint Eastwood movies in the spy / espionage genre , the films include Firefox (1982), Absolute power (1997 , and Open fire (1993) . Here Eastwood contribute to create an acceptable film , plenty of opportunities for Clint to strut his climbing skills , it's all in good fun and often unintentionally funny .

The events in the final climbing scenes are loosely based on the 1936 Eiger tragedy, when, during an attempt to the first ascent of the North Face all four members of the climbing party (Andreas Hinterstroisser, Toni Kurtz, Willy Angerer and Edi Reiner) died in circumstances that are picked up in this film. Willy Angerer was injured by rockfall during the ascent (the french climber in the film). After attempting to escape the face by ascending, the party decided to retreat but got stuck on the way down above the Hinterstroisser traverse. This passage had been first climbed by Andreas Hinterstroisser on their way up, however they could not cross it back due the fact that they had not left fixed ropes in place, combined with ice covering the rock since the weather had meanwhile deteriorated (as shown in the film). The climbers tried a desperate attempt to abseil down an overhanging section of the wall, approximately above the railroad window (as shown in the film), but Hintertroisser, Reiner and Angerer fell to their deaths in the attempt. Toni Kurtz, like Eastwood in the film, survived the fall but was hanging from a rope and unable to abseil or climb back. A rescue party of mountain guides managed reaching a position directly below Kurtz and provide him with a rope to abseil. Tragically, unlike Eastwood in the movie, Kurtz had by then reached the limit of his strength and, when his carabiner got stuck into a knot in the rope, he was unable to cut the rope above him with his frostbitten hands and free himself. He died only a few meters above his rescuers. These events have been later portrayed on film with more strict factual adherence in 'The Beckoning Silence' (2007) and North Face (2008).