Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

shakercoola The Eiger Sanction is a tongue-in-cheek spy mystery adventure. The story and screenplay is confused and silly, the characters vaguely unscrupulous, but the film is notable for being spectacular - one of the first mountain-based adventure films filmed entirely on location. This was at the insistence of its director and star. The stuntwork performed by Eastwood is very impressive and stands up well 40 years later. The photography is stunning at locations like Monument Valley and the Bernese Alps, and the musical score by John Williams matches the spectacle very well.

jc-osms A cool-sounding title for a film to which the actual movie itself doesn't quite match up. It's a strange mish-mash of a Bond-type espionage thriller and cliff-hanging mountaineering actioner which makes you think you're watching two films spliced together. It begins by introducing us to Clint as the oddly named Jonathon Hemlock, an art teacher by day, pushing away, albeit with a pat on the behind, the pretty young college girls who have the hots for him, but who's also a hired assassin for a secret Government agency in his spare time, where he answers to a mysterious / ridiculous albino, rasping-voiced boss called Mr Dragon you can barely see on the screen as he's bathed in infra-red light to alleviate his condition.Clint's Hemlock wants off the murder-go-round but is lured back for one last double-hit when an old colleague gets taken out by a pair of enemy assassins over the theft of a nerve-agent (read McGoffin) the ownership which of course could threaten world peace plus the mission has to take place during a climb up the north face of the Eiger alongside three other climbers any one of whom could be our man's target. Did I mention that Hemlock is a crack mountaineer who's twice tried and failed to climb the mountain or that he's a discerning art lover whose price per hit includes modern art masterpieces he keeps in a secret room?The problem with the movie is in the jarring schism between the two elements which the direction can't bridge. A Bond movie might give over 20 minutes to both these strands and move onto the next action set-piece but here the film dawdles over the scene-setting extended prologue before abruptly shifting to and then staying with the mountain scenes for its second hour.Naturally, along the way, a bevy of "Clint Birds" throw themselves at our hero, in a film which highlights (or should that be "low-lights" in retrospect the cliched and sexist way women were usually treated in action films of this type - one shapely minor female character goes by the name of "Buns" which pretty much says it all. The cliches continue with Jack Cassidy's turn or should that be twirl as a camp ex-colleague of Hemlock's who gets his come-uppance for past and current treachery and the depiction of a moody but athletic young Native American female beauty who inevitably rewards Hemlock for completing his exacting "training runs" with her by silently slipping into bed with him - anyone else would get a congratulatory clap on the back but of course, as ever, it's good to be Clint in his own movie. The climbing scenes are well shot and don't lack for realism or drama as Clint saunters through the unconvincing story-line even at 20000 feet on a snow-peaked mountain, but I personally found it to be more of an uphill climb over its 126 minute viewing time.

CinefanR A particularly bad movie, even for the 70's film making. Offensive, misogynistic, racist, homophobic and just plain stupid, start to finish. All the women in this sorry excuse for a movie are dumb bimbos whose sole purpose of existence is to get laid for money. The ongoing jokes about rape, race etc are in very poor taste, if not unacceptable. The script is beyond stupid, the acting terrible. The only redeeming quality of this movie is the scenery, but there's nowhere near enough of it to make you sit through. The attempts at humor are incredibly lame, and Eastwood's "tough" persona gets old really fast. As a Clint Eastwood fan, I found this very disappointing.

Cheese Hoven The complete lack of political correctness seems to have endeared this film to some and made them overlook its obvious flaws. The characterisation is weak, the plot rambling and the action sequences largely confined to the last and most interesting portion of the film, the only part which actually takes place on the Eiger. It is a pity that the film takes so long to get here and with so many unnecessary digressions (and much silliness), for the mountain sequences (although not as compelling as they could have been) are easily the most convincing part of this so-so thriller.Clint Eastwood plays Hemlock a lecturer with a secret sideline in adventure. In this respect he is like a prototype for Indiana Jones only he's much darker. While Jones merely tries to redeem lost artifacts for the benefits of mankind (and therefore is an unreservedly good character), Hemlock murders people in cold blood to enlarge his own private hoard of expensive artworks. It is therefore difficult to really care whether he succeeds or fails.It actually becomes more difficult to relate to him as the movie progresses. After he leaves his former friend (a camp homosexual wonderfully played by the much missed Jack Cassidy) to die an agonising death in the desert, any sympathy I had for him disappeared. And of course there is the question left 'hanging' (sorry for the pun) at the end as to whether Hemlock has intentionally 'sanctioned' (ie murdered) several innocent people on the Eiger.Apart from such nastiness there is also a great deal of silliness of a formulaic kind. 'Dragon' is Hemlock's boss- he's an albino with an aversion to light who for some inexplicable reason is the head of the American spy network (how did that happen exactly?) He seems to belong to the world of Austin Powers. His sidekick is Pope another crudely drawn caricature. As indeed is Jemima Brown the sort of over-sexed black chick who were frequent in the early 70s blaxplotation cinema. The scenes where she beds Hemlock only to steal his money is one of the many unnecessary detours.