Synopsis
HIS LIFELINE - held by the assassin he hunted.
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.
The Eiger Sanction
1975 Directed by Clint Eastwood
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Alternative Titles
La Sanction, Отмъщението на Айгър, Licens att döda
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i hate that i love this
the dog is called faggot lmfao
relatedly, wow - what an artist, tbh
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“Well, that’s fine. Now all I have to do is kill every mountain climber with a sore foot.”
This oddball, politically incorrect, deliberately paced Clint Eastwood spy yarn is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But, dated elements aside, Eastwood (who directs as well as stars in the lead) serves up a pretty compelling take on the secret agent movie genre.
Eastwood plays Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, your average college professor/mountain climber/gun for hire who, after a friend is killed, accepts a gig from an albino former nazi known as “Dragon”, the head of secret agency C2. Off to Switzerland he goes, tasked with locating the man responsible for the killing, believed to be among a group that will…
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Eastwood's typical terse formal economy and its application to some spectacular, extremely dangerous (guys died), climbing stunts can't really make up for this being otherwise generally sluggish and expository.
More important to note here is the truly bizarre humor, something that pops up in Eastwood's films a lot (see the farting dog in SUDDEN IMPACT), but never quite like this. The film is based on a novel by Trevanian, a weirdo who wrote what he insisted were meta-spy novel spoofs. Clint actually stays fairly faithful to the source but plays it entirely straight, including a bunch of the usual moral handwringing crap about how espionage is shockingly not a noble calling. Unfortunately he also ports over the sly black seductress…
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once again eastwood's always compelling screen presence and sturdy direction overpowers most of my qualms with this absurd spy thriller about an art professor/climbing enthusiast/assassin hired by an albino nazi (kept barely alive by blood transfusions in a neon red room) to climb a giant, snowy mountain to kill an anonymous target he has to discover during the mission. much of the set-up for this i think could've been trimmed (especially the tired attempts comedy and bizarre stereotype characterizations) but as soon as it hits the mountain and you get to see eastwood and co really climbing the beautiful switzerland locations on a telephoto lens while he's trying to figure out which of the fellow climbing enthusiasts is the man…
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Clint Eastwood A Retrospective - Week 18
Former government assassin Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) now devotes his time to teaching and collecting paintings, but his quiet life is interrupted when he is persuaded by his former employers to work for them again. Hemlock has to join a crew of explorers (George Kennedy) on a trip to the Eiger, a treacherous Swiss mountain. Hemlock must simultaneously determine which of his fellow climbers is a Soviet spy, kill his target and scale the deadly peak.
Clint Eastwood enters the spy game with The Eiger Sanction, with mixed results. It is a film with three parts, the first sets up Eastwood as an art professor, and of his past life as an… -
The Eiger Sanction....1975
Holy shit people, this one almost takes the cake.
It's the James Bond clone/mountain climbing movie nobody asked for, The Eiger Sanction.Clint Eastwood is a art professor/retired assassin for a shadowy government outfit, headed up by an albino named The Dragon. (He needs his blood replaced twice a year.) He has been given a mission to kill the guy who killed his friend for the formula to a germ weapon, or some hocus pocus like that.
It's a mountain climbing mission, lucky Eastwood is a art professor/best assassian in the world/top mountain climbing expert in the world. (I'm not shitting you folks. )
There are bimbo spies and assassins, a flaming gay rival to Eastwood. (He… -
Clint Eastwood was 45 years old when he made this, which is the same age I am now. But by the looks of things, we’ve spent those years very differently.
A lot of gross 70s counter-revolutionary manliness on display here, Clint building to excess the kind of image he’ll spend the later part of his career (starting with, say, White Hunter Black Heart(?)) examining more critically.
But the climbing scenes are great and it’s a lot of fun when the goofy creepy guy says “The Eiger Sanction!” for the first time. Because that’s the title of the movie.
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“Screw Marlon Brando.”
The Eiger Sanction is one of Clint Eastwood’s most interesting, and often overlooked early directional efforts. I’m glad I finally got around to rewatching it, since my only memory of the first viewing was the intense mountain climbing scene during the movie’s climax. Naturally, that’s a big part of it and still the most memorable attribute, but on the surface there’s a pretty great crime narrative that’s much better than your average spy flick.
It tells the story of classical art professor, Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood) who once worked as a professional assassin. After being forced out of retirement for one last job, Hemlock is assigned a target but must first join a group of climbers on an…
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There are guilty pleasures, and then there is The Eiger Sanction.
You say the plot strains credibility? Check.
You say some are justified in calling the film silly? Check.
You say you can’t take seriously a film with an African American named Jemima, a woman named George, and a dog named Faggot? Check.
You say Eastwood is not convincing as an art history professor? Check.
You say Clint’s direction is a slight regression after the stylish heights of High Plains Drifter? Check.
You say the score by John Williams, the same year as Jaws, is derivative and occasionally annoying? Check.
You say it is both misogynist and homophobic? Well, as Clark Gable says to Ward Bond in similar circs, “You…
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Much of this is encapsulated by the one-minute stretch where a rock-climber / assassin / art-history professor (Clint Eastwood), on contract from an albino ex-Nazi crime lord known as Dragon, gets humped by a hard-dicked dog whose owner, an effeminate man with a look best described as “Cowboy Liberace,” reveals the pet’s name is Faggot and, handing said pet to a scantily clad woman called Buns, merrily shouts “Be careful he doesn’t rape you!”
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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… -
"Here's to the selfish killer and the patriotic whore."
Clint Eastwood adapts a work of total fiction about a government killer-for-hire, whose pure machismo takes precedence over very real and justified ambivalence about whether or not he's doing the right thing. And 40 years before American Sniper, he did it here first.
Despite an airtight thriller structure that hops around the globe and culminates in a game of Spot-the-Spy on the side of a mountain, this never quite reaches a level of intensity that would justify its 2+ hour running time. The mountain climbing stuff is incredible though, miles ahead of the usual phony soundstage rock-climbs you're used to seeing in movies, without even so much as a rear-projection shot…
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