“The Eiger Sanction was a film that I don’t really think is the best movie in the world, but I did have a great time with it because of how ridiculous it is.”
The Eiger Sanction was an action thriller film released in 1975, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Hal Dresner, Warren Murphy, and Rod Whitaker, and starring Clint Eastwood as Dr. Jonathan Hemlock alongside George Kennedy as Ben Bowman. It is ultimately about a retired government assassin turned art history professor who is blackmailed by his former intelligence agency into completing one final “sanction.” That mission requires him to join an international climbing team ascending the treacherous north face of the Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps to identify and eliminate the hidden enemy spy who murdered an old friend.
Moving right along in my Clint Eastwood marathon of films, I have to admit this journey of movies I’d never really heard of before is... I don’t know. It’s a lot of fun, and for me personally, a majority of these Clint Eastwood films have been kind of hidden gems. Eastwood is quickly climbing my ranks of favorite actors as well as directors. Very early in his directing career, he had some bangers, whether or not they were successful at the box office. As we know, much later in his career, the movies he cranked out were absolutely remarkable in a multitude of ways. The Eiger Sanction was a film that I don’t really think is the best movie in the world, but I did have a great time with it because of how ridiculous it is.
Right from the get-go, we have this spy-forward, assassin, espionage tale with Eastwood at the center of it as a professor by day, assassin by night. I mean, technically he’s supposed to be retired from the assassin game, but they keep reeling him back in. This felt a little bit like Indiana Jones with the professor-by-day element, but really, the franchise this movie feels the most like is actually James Bond, and for good reason.
When you first meet the villain of the story, he’s in a very dark, red room because he’s sensitive to light. The room is specifically temperature-controlled. He’s a weird albino Nazi that controls all of the sanctions (aka assassinations)... and he feels legitimately like an old-school, mustache-twirling Bond villain. I learned after I saw the movie that the film was indeed adapted from a book of the same name, and the book itself was actually built up as a James Bond spoof. It makes so much more sense once you find that out.
Most people watching the movie, though, aren’t going to look that deep into it. Instead, I think a big focus in the film is the dangerous stunts bit. The mountain climbing, Cliffhanger-esque part of the movie stands out because you might not realize this, but Eastwood did a majority of his own stunts in this movie, literally mountain climbing and hanging by rope. This film is essentially the biggest and most dangerous stunt work Clint Eastwood ever did in his career.
In fact, there was a man working on the movie as a stunt double and photographer, David Knowles, who was tragically killed while filming when a boulder fell on him while he was climbing in the exact same spot Eastwood was at minutes prior. Eastwood contemplated canceling production altogether, but the other professional mountain climbers said no. Basically, they all know the risks involved when climbing a mountain before they sign on, and to cancel the film would make it as if David Knowles died for nothing. It was a little bit of a guilt trip, if I’m being honest, but I am glad that he went through with it.
I think past all that, Clint Eastwood is so sarcastic in the film. Everything he says is a quip, and I had a lot of fun with the dialogue. I think that the story isn’t bad at all, but I do kind of think the pacing dwindles a little bit.
The best part of the movie I would probably say is the second act, which is almost always a rarity. The second act is usually the most boring. Here, that was where the training stuff is, the literal stunt work, the dangerous moments. You can tell there is a significant difference in the authenticity of these scenes. You can tell how crazy it is that Eastwood managed to do this practically. It’s very cool.
The third act is, well, the title. It’s the stuff that takes place on the Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps. As far as I could tell, this stuff was also shot on location on the Eiger Mountain; however, it doesn’t feel as authentic as the stuff in the second act for whatever reason. They were focusing a lot more on the spy element and the drama—the part where his character was trying to decipher who was the assassin in the group he was with. What it needed, I feel like, was bigger sweeping wide shots, or like earlier in the film, a slow zoom out where all you see is him on the mountain, and then as it zooms out you see how crazy it is that he’s literally there. Kind of like with Mission: Impossible 2‘s intro scene.
It’s a good movie all around. I would just say some of the pacing doesn’t work as strongly as it should, and I almost want to say narratively it seems to want to be a comedy, but it plays off as more serious... and I almost want to say pick one or the other. The comedy was fantastic in it. The sarcasm and satire are strong in this film, but it doesn’t stick to it. The book on which it’s based, I understand, is largely a satirical comedy, and if they stuck with that, I think the movie would have worked out better overall.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 33/50 (66%)
Biased/Entertainment Score: 35/50 (70%)
Total Combined Score: 68/100 (68% or 3.5/5 on Letterboxd)