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.

It's a 'one last job,two actually'plot.The 'job' ,Eastwood plays an ex mountaineer and art loving teacher with a class full of teenage girls, will feed his art obsession. He gets seduced on a plane by a hostess.I swear he says something about raping her as a demonstration of his desire.She's an agent.He's hired to bump off one of the mountaineering team.He doesn't know which one yet.This is a giant hole in the plot but a way to keep you guessing. The team is comprised of an older one with a nympho wife and 2 other Germans or Austrians.One is nice and one is nasty. Clint has to train with an old friend.Tough guy actor Burt Kennedy who spends the whole film angry,shouting obscenities and drinking beer.It's only 70s American beer though. He trains him with the help of a dark haired woman.At this point Clint starts a bizarre set of racist insults.It appears she is Native Indian.David Cassady's dad plays a 70s gay man.All safari suit,cravat,small dog.. The weather on the Eiger turns nasty.Clint survives of course and Burt turns out to be the target. A male fantasy.

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.

Clint Eastwood both directed and stars in this spy-type thriller as a classical art teacher, collector, and professional assassin(!) named Jonathan Hemlock who has been called upon to come out of retirement to avenge the death of a friend and former colleague, which leads him to a mountain climbing group as the prime suspects, helped by its guide(played by George Kennedy) who must climb the treacherous Eiger mountain to uncover the truth... Failed attempt at a thriller only has attractive scenery to compensate for the poorly plotted and overlong story that moves quite slowly, cluttered with too many bizarre characters. A real misfire from Eastwood.