The Eiger Sanction

Name: The Eiger Sanction
Director: Clint Eastwood
Released: 1975

Synopsis

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.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
There comes a time in some movies when sheer spectacle overwhelms any consideration of plot, and Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction is a movie like that. It has a plot so unlikely and confused that we can't believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don't care.
70
The New York Times
The Eiger Sanction is a long, foolish but never boring suspense melodrama about a college art professor named Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood), who has a passion for French Impressionists and mountain climbing and an underground reputation as the best assassin in the international spy business.
70
Variety
Eastwood, who also directs and according to studio did his own mountain climbing without doubles, manages fine suspense. His direction displays a knowledge that permits rugged action.
50
Time Out London
Shot in a straightforward adventure style, with Eastwood as the art lecturer cum cold-blooded assassin hired to kill his victim while climbing the North face of the Eiger, the movie is little but a series of nice panoramas and clichéd action sequences.
40
TV Guide Magazine
Unlike his brilliant work in directing westerns, Eastwood falls victim to stodgy pacing and ludicrous acting. The Eiger Sanction does, however, contain some brilliant, breathtaking mountaineering sequences in which Eastwood did his own stunt work.