The Eiger Sanction
1975 Directed by Clint Eastwood
Synopsis
EASTWOOD is the man . . Eiger is the location . . and the sanction - is a licence to kill!
A classical art professor and collector, who doubles as a professional assassin, is coerced out of retirement to avenge the murder of an old friend.
Cast
Popular reviews
More-
Back in the seventies they didn't bother with being politically correct. There's a gay character in this movie who not only wears a safari suit but has a little dog called " faggot". This is the tip of Eastwood's iceberg of flaws in a movie that is as confusing as it is odd.
An art professor who doubles as an assassin is odd enough. Add a mysterious albino ex-Nazi controller of a secret covert government agency who kill with impunity and the strange factor goes up a notch. Persuaded to return to his assassin ways by both a handsome paycheck and the chance to avenge a former colleague's death,our Clint gets into shape for climbing the Eiger. Oh I forgot… -
This is my absolute favorite Clint Eastwood movie that is not a Western or a Dirty Hairy fick and is set in the Swiss Alps.
Eastwood stars as Dr Hemlock an art professor and collector who supported his habit performing "sanctions" but has since retired. A friend gets murdered and Dragon, the head of C2, pulls him out of retirement to solve the mystery, sanction the responsible party and earn some extra money to buy a coveted Pissarro.
The only clue is that the culprit will be part of a group climbing the Eiger so off he goes to join the party. George Kennedy portrays an old friend who is tied to the expedition. Jack Cassidy is as smarmy as ever.
One thing that is a bit jarring so many decades later is that there is a fair bit of politically incorrect dialogue so try to ignore that and enjoy the rest of the movie.
-
GOP conventions be damned, I still love Clint Eastwood. He is the ultimate manly man: he rarely ever dies on screen, and he doesn't seem to age like normal people do; Eastwood just gets extra layers of leather to, well, probably to repel bullets with. He had a mean streak of iconic action movies in the seventies, and the Eiger Sanction is one of the more entertaining films in that series.
The premise is ridiculous: Hemlock is a retired assassin, now working as an art professor. He is pulled in by a SPECTRE-like mastermind for one last job, to avenge the death of another formerly retired killer. To do this, he has to climb the Eiger's north face, which is…
-
One star, yes. Completely, unremittingly terrible. Pretty goddamn amusing, however. So, in a way one star, in a way five stars. It's terrible, you should definitely watch it.
-
If your goal is to watch all the movies Clint Eastwood directed because they tend to be more interesting than those he acts in but doesn't direct, you can probably afford to skip this one. It's a miscalculation. Clint stars as Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, the most elitist and least appealing character he's ever played. Hemlock is a popular professor who also happens to be a former government assassin and an expert mountain climber. Oh, and in his spare time he buys stolen rare paintings. He's brought back into service for one last "sanction" when his agency tells him an enemy spy is one of the international team climbing the treacherous Eiger Mountain, which Hemlock has twice tried and failed to…
-
The Eiger doesn’t even come into play until the final third of the film, and after some convoluted twists the sanction doesn’t really matter that much. Despite that, it’s a fun and slightly camp spy thriller that gives Eastwood something a little different to do, and is well worth checking out.
Recent reviews
More-
Back in the seventies they didn't bother with being politically correct. There's a gay character in this movie who not only wears a safari suit but has a little dog called " faggot". This is the tip of Eastwood's iceberg of flaws in a movie that is as confusing as it is odd.
An art professor who doubles as an assassin is odd enough. Add a mysterious albino ex-Nazi controller of a secret covert government agency who kill with impunity and the strange factor goes up a notch. Persuaded to return to his assassin ways by both a handsome paycheck and the chance to avenge a former colleague's death,our Clint gets into shape for climbing the Eiger. Oh I forgot… -
Although it exhausted some of my investment in its borderline-drab-whodunit plot as it kept going and going and never seeming to want to find a conclusion, The Eiger Sanction remained a fine enough entertainment to call it a "see it once" type of adventure flick.
Clint Eastwood directs himself in what has to be a candidate for the most preposterous type of superhuman character he has ever played. In this movie he plays an ex-assassin who is currently enjoying his retirement as a college professor and expensive art collector, oh and he also happens to be an expert mountain climber, the most desirable man to ever walk the earth, and he can intimidate even the most sinister villain or masculine…
-
This feels a lot like two movies - the first where Eastwood is snapping off macho one-liner's and beating the crap out of people, the second on the mountain where the plot confusingly comes to a head. Each on their own is fun but together it just doesn't work. Regardless, as I've said before, sometimes it's enough just to watch Eastwood doing things. It doesn't matter what the plot is or who shows up. As long as Eastwood's in a bad mood and people try to fuck with him, you're going to be entertained. That's the case here.
-
Climb that high up and it does funny things to your brain. Clint Eastwood’s espionage-on-a-mountain thriller The Eiger Sanction is, among other things, a daunting feat of old-school technical bravado. Eastwood stars as an art professor who used to moonlight for the government as an assassin, and the plot is kicked off when he’s called back for one last job. Said job (an elimination of two men who engineered an opening-film hit on an old colleague), for reasons too convoluted for either myself or the film to properly sum up, involves climbing a large mountain in Switzerland. The mountain-climbing action, most of it confined to the film’s second half, is terrifically rendered. Eastwood’s unfussy style of filmmaking, coupled with his…
-
holy shit. the racism! the sexism! the fake climbing!
-
"I thought I'd given up rape...but I changed my mind."
Clint Eastwood is a great director who deserves big budgets, and 'The Eiger Sanction' is his attempt at a James Bond sort of film. For the first half it plays out like a fantastically corny, incredibly dated spy flick; We learn that Clint is a charismatic art professor who, wait for it, STEALS priceless paintings with his mad assassin skills. When his ex-Nazi boss. the single most offensive depiction of an Albino in cinematic history, drags him back into the business to avenge the death of a friend, it's business as usual. Clint throws a guy out of a window, seduces a sexy black spy with that "witty" wisecrack about…
-
If your goal is to watch all the movies Clint Eastwood directed because they tend to be more interesting than those he acts in but doesn't direct, you can probably afford to skip this one. It's a miscalculation. Clint stars as Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, the most elitist and least appealing character he's ever played. Hemlock is a popular professor who also happens to be a former government assassin and an expert mountain climber. Oh, and in his spare time he buys stolen rare paintings. He's brought back into service for one last "sanction" when his agency tells him an enemy spy is one of the international team climbing the treacherous Eiger Mountain, which Hemlock has twice tried and failed to…
-
Allright spy/revenge movie, but with a horrid dialogue.
-
GOP conventions be damned, I still love Clint Eastwood. He is the ultimate manly man: he rarely ever dies on screen, and he doesn't seem to age like normal people do; Eastwood just gets extra layers of leather to, well, probably to repel bullets with. He had a mean streak of iconic action movies in the seventies, and the Eiger Sanction is one of the more entertaining films in that series.
The premise is ridiculous: Hemlock is a retired assassin, now working as an art professor. He is pulled in by a SPECTRE-like mastermind for one last job, to avenge the death of another formerly retired killer. To do this, he has to climb the Eiger's north face, which is…