ingemar-4
This movie has one thing in its favor, really only one, but it is good: The mountain climbing scenes. They are positively first rate. The fact that Eastwood did his own stunts, and this was done before all modern digital effects, makes this a masterpiece in mountain climbing film making.The script, however, is downright terrible. The whole setup makes no sense at all. Also, the action as well as interaction considering the hero's old enemy Miles (Jack Cassidy) isn't particularly interesting, and neither is the early buildup of the movie. The heroes conflict with the organization feels slapped-on. Oh, and the scene where George (Brenda Venus) flashes her assets on the mountain is downright silly.But the mountain climbing, including the early ones with Eastwood and Kennedy, are wonderful. So I give the stunts and climbing scenes a 10 and the script... well, a 3 maybe.Thereby this movie lines up with Jackie Chan's "Operation Condor" as a movie that you don't watch for the plot, but for the great visuals.
SnoopyStyle
Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is an art history professor, expert mountaineer and a former government assassin who performed "sanctions" for C2. He abhors the public seeing and not appreciating great pieces of art. He uses his fees to amass a high end collection. His albino ex-Nazi blood-transfusing former boss Dragon coerces him into taking out two men who killed agent Wormwood who turns out to be his friend who once saved his life. After killing the first man, the second man is found to be part of an international mountaineering team climbing the north face of Eiger in Switzerland. It's up to Hemlock to discover his identity. He gets back in shape with his friend Ben Bowman (George Kennedy) who guides him on the climb.I can't really describe properly the large amount of stupidity in this Bondlike thriller. The dialog is pretty bad. The Dragon is laughable. Hemlock isn't cool but is a weird combo. I keep thinking Dirty Harry has become an elitist art expert and mountain climber. It's weird. There's an unnecessary side trip with a faggot villain. That whole section should be cut out and he should get to the mountain as soon as possible. At least, there are some good vertigo-inducing picturesque climbing scenes.
fedor8
Something tells me Clint isn't too picky about the scripts he agrees to do. I can only imagine how bad the novel this crap is based on must be. Plenty of nonsense had been crammed into this two-hour filmic banality.Clint rejects an illicit offer from one of his students – fine; we'll ignore that. It made for a vaguely amusing semi-anecdote which served to prove to us the stereotypically absurd wholesomeness of the hero's impeccable character. We then find out he collects art "masterpieces" for just a fraction of their real value; how he achieves this isn't explained at all, but we'll ignore this bit of hooey too, coz I really couldn't give a rat's ass about over-rated, over-priced canvas blotches. But then the real nonsense kicks in. Clint's former boss is a fat albino who is forced to live in near-complete darkness at all times; no, I can't ignore this at all. How the hell does a man with such a debilitating condition climb up the government ranks all the way to the top of the CIA? Do government suits scout dark hospital rooms and peruse through medical files for potential albino talent? Have YOU ever seen or heard of a top government official who was born a paraplegic, an albino, or with some other extreme, crippling affliction? Even the James Bond franchise hasn't yet dabbled with albino villains or albino Ms or Qs. How could Clint's character possibly be so STUPID not to suspect that the black girl is a plant? (I don't mean a tree or a flower; the only vegetable in this context is guy who concocted the novel.) Perhaps the book goes into greater details, explaining how huge his Ego must be, not allowing him to just consider the possibility than not all stewardesses would offer him sex within seconds of seeing him for the first time, hence that they might have ulterior motives. But fine, not all action-movie heroes have to be the brightest cookies.The worst aspect of TES, however, is its essential premise: the micro-film with a biological warfare formula. Can you possibly guess the "great plot-twist"? It turns out to be a fake formula, its sole purpose being to make the Russkies hunt it down. WHY though? As soon as the Soviets get the formula, they will test it – and then realize that it's fake! So what could the U.S. government POSSIBLY gain with this silly, expensive, overly complex ploy? Nothing at all. In fact, they lose a few men, and have to dish out $120,000 to Clint - and even listen to his self-righteous political speeches. Then again, perhaps I am too stupid to understand how watching the Soviets waste a few weeks on a formula that doesn't work might be a very clever idea, or of what military or strategic use this might be. As soon as the Russians realize it's fake they'll renew their search for the real one. Or did Clint the Eastwood seriously expect us to think that Russians would lock up the formula in some safe, never to be looked at again, once they got hold of it? Then again, I doubt Clint expects his viewers to think at all; nothing new, considering how many dumb movies he'd directed. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh… and duh. The fact that Clint is forced to CLIMB A MOUNTAIN UNDER DANGEROUS CONDITIONS in order to carry out the "sanction" – without even knowing who that target is – only adds to the unintentional comedy. Couldn't he just have WAITED for their expedition to come back down? Or terminated his target before the climb? Since when is it only possible to assassinate a mountain-climber DURING a mountain climb? Perhaps the only way to kill an astronaut would be to wait for him to fly to the Moon… For some reason, the only way to find out the identity of his target was to join the mountaineering expedition. Did that work? No, but all the members of the expedition got killed in accidents anyway! I'd expect to find this kind of nonsense in a parody of a thriller, not a thriller itself.Perhaps the movie was simply cursed by having a notable "Plan 9 From Outer Space" alumni on board. Gregory Walcott; the comic-relief(?) that Clint gets to beat up every once in a while, lending further credence to theories that this movie was in fact a parody.One of many silly plot-twists – and one even a vodka-gorged chimp could see an hour in advance – is that George Kennedy is the man Clint had been looking for all along. Kennedy was far too friendly with Clint, and this made him instantly suspicious. (Which goes to show how clichéd the script is.) Kennedy suddenly develops a limp, the one clue Clint had to go on, just because it got cold. So the limp leg was in no danger of limping during those earlier practice climbs back in the States? Duh, duh, duh. Very predictably, Clint doesn't kill him. Instead, he kills thousands of the viewer's brain-cells.Worse yet, this goofy little thriller has a political message to convey, as well. You must have met people who considered both sides of The Cold War to have been equally vicious and evil; everyone knows at least one idiot of that sort. Well, that is precisely the idiotic message: both sides are ideologically corrupt, and it doesn't matter whose side you're on. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh… So the U.S. had millions of labour camps i.e. gulags too? Long lines for toilet paper? Millions of people trying to get OUT (of the USSR) as opposed to trying to get IN (the U.S.)? This is typical malcontent, left-wing drivel written by a closet Marxist. Clint, a paid assassin, moralizes through his clenched teeth, giving pacifist speeches about double-standards in super-power politics. It doesn't get dumber than that.
David Allen
"The Eiger Sanction" (1975) starring Clint Eastwood is a spectacular "mountain movie" of the sort big in 1920's German classic cinema.The famous 1929 German movie titled "The White Hell Of Pitz Palou" (1929 Germany) starring young Leni Riefenshahl directed by Joseph Pabst is an example of German "mountain movies" which always included spectacular camera work recording breathtaking icy mountain scenes, most often in the European Alps.World audiences were very enthusiastic about "mountain movies" but few were made after sound movies replaced silent movies."The Eiger Sanction" (1975) is an exception, and a spectacular one.About 50 percent of the movie is taken up with incredible and spectacular camera work of breathtaking and hair raising mountain scenery both in the USA's famous Monument Valley terrain, and also in the Swiss Alps.The Richard Shickel authored biography of Clint Eastwood titled "Clint" reports that a stunt man doubling for the actor-climbers in the Swiss Alps part of the movie was accidentally killed during the shoot, and the entire production was almost shut down as a result."The Eiger Sanction" (1975) shows both the beauty and the danger of monster mountains, and must be counted as among the best outdoor photography ever provided for a Hollywood feature movie.The movie is historically interesting because it mirrored its times (the middle 1970's), which were still part of the counter-cultural revolution and sympathies usually called collectively "the 60's," but actually a period comprising the last half of the 1960's and first half of the 1970's (the 1970's was also "counter-cultural," but doesn't get credit for it when the while era is referred to as "the '60's").Heterosexual interplay and enthusiasms between Clint Eastwood and various attractive actresses part of the movie are part of the show, and are of a sort which later disappeared from movies after the "Sexual Revolution" of the those "counter-cultural times" faded away.The anti-CIA, anti-government sympathies and mentality of counter-cultural times are also seen in "The Eiger Sanction" (1975), which proposes cynically that CIA ordered and staged assassinations were not always necessary or justified."The Eiger Sanction" (1975) is a CIA agent movie which, unlike most others of its type, does not have a final scene where the good guy and the bad guy duke it out at the end, and the bad guy "gets his." The main interest of the movie is the wonderful photography....the movie is sort of an ultimate travelogue of spectacular mountains seen in vivid color and from astonishing angles, with camera work done from helicopters and small airplanes which "gets in close" in almost a surgical way."The Eiger Sanction" (1975) did not go on to become a famous or honored movie listed among the "classics" of its time, but it deserves to be."Jaws" (1975) was made the same year (1975) as "The Eiger Sanction" (1975), and was also produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown (Helen Gurley Brown's husband!), and also included music composed by composer John Williams."The Eiger Sanction" (1975) included heavyweight support talent, and the result was and still is a true winner.----------------- Written by Tex Allen, SAG Actor.Email Tex Allen at
[email protected] Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for movie credits and biography information.
