{"id":1463,"date":"2024-07-31T03:05:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T03:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2024-10-14T00:46:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T04:46:31","slug":"the-eiger-sanction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/31\/the-eiger-sanction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eiger Sanction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Eiger Sanction<\/strong> (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 129 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clint Eastwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Hal Dresner, Warren B. Murphy and Rod Whitaker\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Frank Stanley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 21, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy, Heidi Bruhl, Thayer David, Reiner Schoene, Michael Grimm, Jean-Pierre Bernard, Brenda Venus, Gregory Walcott, Candice Rialson, Elaine Shore, Dan Howard, Jack Kosslyn, Walter Kraus, Frank Redmond, Siegfried Wallach.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $14.2M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you ever wondered what it would be like to see Clint Eastwood play James Bond, wonder no more. He plays a Bond-like character in The Eiger Sanction<\/strong>, an entertaining but dumb action-thriller that combines espionage and mountain climbing. It\u2019s entertaining in that it offers up good action scenes and thrilling climbing sequences that clearly aren\u2019t faked. It\u2019s dumb in that the plot makes no sense and ultimately doesn\u2019t matter. Yes, there is a MacGuffin, but nobody seems to care about it too much by the end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Eastwood, who also directs, plays Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor who also happens to be a retired assassin for a sinister government agency headed by Dragon (David, Dark Shadows), an albino ex-Nazi with an aversion to light. He wants Hemlock to \u201csanction\u201d (i.e. kill) the two men who killed another agent in the field. If he agrees to take the job, Dragon will see to it that the IRS never finds out about his private art collection, one he couldn\u2019t possibly afford on a teacher\u2019s salary. Talk about an offer you can\u2019t refuse, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The first target is an easy one. The second will be a greater challenge. Dragon isn\u2019t exactly sure who it is. All he knows is that he walks with a limp and he\u2019s a member of an international mountain-climbing team that will soon attempt to ascend the north face of the Eiger Mountain in Switzerland. It\u2019s a climb Hemlock has already attempted twice and failed both times. For his service, he\u2019ll receive $100,000 and the promised tax exemption letter to the IRS. First thing, he has to get back in shape. To do that, he goes to an Arizona climbing school run by his old friend Ben Bowman (Kennedy, Airport). While there, he runs into former friend turned foe Miles Mellough (Cassidy, Bunny O\u2019Hare). Might he know something about Hemlock\u2019s assignment?<\/p>\n

\u00a0So I\u2019d like to talk about a major plot hole in The Eiger Sanction<\/strong>. At least I think it\u2019s a plot hole. It involves Hemlock\u2019s second target. The agency head Dragon is supposedly an all-knowing omnipresence with connections everywhere. How does he NOT know the identity of the second target? Now I could be wrong here. It\u2019s intimated at one point that the whole job is a set-up, so it could be he\u2019s just sending Hemlock on a wild goose chase by sending him up that mountain. I\u2019m not clear on this aspect of the story. Like I said, the plot doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense. I guess it\u2019s fine since it ends up taking a back seat to the mountain-climbing stuff.<\/p>\n

Now about the mountain-climbing scenes in The Eiger Sanction<\/strong>. They\u2019re some of the best I\u2019ve ever seen. They\u2019re genuinely thrilling thanks to the brilliant cinematography of Frank Stanley (Magnum Force) who was injured during the shoot. It led to a falling out with Eastwood and Bruce Surtees becoming his regular cinematographer. He shoots the sequences in such a way that we know its Clint doing all the climbing and hanging off ledges, not some stunt double. It makes the danger feel more real.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I first stumbled across The Eiger Sanction<\/strong> while browsing the shelves at West Coast Video one Friday night in summer \u201989. I never heard of it until that moment, but it starred Clint and I generally like his movies. This was no exception. Although it wasn\u2019t quite what I was expecting, it was a great way to wile away a couple of hours on a night when I had nothing else going on. Clint is always great. Okay, so his character here isn\u2019t all believable, but neither is James Bond. To his credit, he doesn\u2019t take the role or the plot too seriously. It looks like he\u2019s having fun actually. He receives ample support from a talented supporting cast, especially Cassidy who camps it up mightily as the kind of gay villain that\u2019s now seen as an offensive caricature. Vonetta McGee (Blacula) is good as Jemima Brown, fellow C2 agent and romantic interest. Props also to Brenda Venus (Foxy Brown) as a Native American who assists in Hemlock\u2019s training. Let\u2019s just say she knows how to motivate her trainees.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t describe The Eiger Sanction <\/strong>as fast-paced, but it is thrilling and compelling. It has Clint Eastwood in the lead which is always a strong selling point. Now I\u2019m really going to throw you for a loop. I\u2019m all for a remake. Although there is no substitute for Clint, I can think of a couple of actors that would fill the role nicely. I only hope if it happens, the makers opt for practical stunts instead of CGI or green-screen. Until then, the original will do just fine.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Eiger Sanction (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 129 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clint Eastwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Hal Dresner, Warren B. Murphy and Rod Whitaker\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Frank Stanley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 21, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy, Heidi Bruhl, Thayer David, Reiner Schoene, Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-Eiger-Sanction-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/2024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}