Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

SnoopyStyle Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is an art history professor, expert mountaineer and a former government assassin who performed "sanctions" for C2. He abhors the public seeing and not appreciating great pieces of art. He uses his fees to amass a high end collection. His albino ex-Nazi blood-transfusing former boss Dragon coerces him into taking out two men who killed agent Wormwood who turns out to be his friend who once saved his life. After killing the first man, the second man is found to be part of an international mountaineering team climbing the north face of Eiger in Switzerland. It's up to Hemlock to discover his identity. He gets back in shape with his friend Ben Bowman (George Kennedy) who guides him on the climb.I can't really describe properly the large amount of stupidity in this Bondlike thriller. The dialog is pretty bad. The Dragon is laughable. Hemlock isn't cool but is a weird combo. I keep thinking Dirty Harry has become an elitist art expert and mountain climber. It's weird. There's an unnecessary side trip with a faggot villain. That whole section should be cut out and he should get to the mountain as soon as possible. At least, there are some good vertigo-inducing picturesque climbing scenes.

arieleviacavafollis The events in the final climbing scenes are loosely based on the 1936 Eiger tragedy, when, during an attempt to the first ascent of the North Face all four members of the climbing party (Andreas Hinterstroisser, Toni Kurtz, Willy Angerer and Edi Reiner) died in circumstances that are picked up in this film. Willy Angerer was injured by rockfall during the ascent (the french climber in the film). After attempting to escape the face by ascending, the party decided to retreat but got stuck on the way down above the Hinterstroisser traverse. This passage had been first climbed by Andreas Hinterstroisser on their way up, however they could not cross it back due the fact that they had not left fixed ropes in place, combined with ice covering the rock since the weather had meanwhile deteriorated (as shown in the film). The climbers tried a desperate attempt to abseil down an overhanging section of the wall, approximately above the railroad window (as shown in the film), but Hintertroisser, Reiner and Angerer fell to their deaths in the attempt. Toni Kurtz, like Eastwood in the film, survived the fall but was hanging from a rope and unable to abseil or climb back. A rescue party of mountain guides managed reaching a position directly below Kurtz and provide him with a rope to abseil. Tragically, unlike Eastwood in the movie, Kurtz had by then reached the limit of his strength and, when his carabiner got stuck into a knot in the rope, he was unable to cut the rope above him with his frostbitten hands and free himself. He died only a few meters above his rescuers. These events have been later portrayed on film with more strict factual adherence in 'The Beckoning Silence' (2007) and North Face (2008).

gavin6942 An classical art professor and collector (Clint Eastwood), who doubles as a professional assassin, is coerced out of retirement to avenge the murder of an old friend.Early on, we get an excellent cameo from exploitation queen Candice Rialson, posing as a young art student. Throughout the film (especially the first half), we get plenty of great humor and one-liners. Yet, it seems to be a largely forgotten piece of cinema.Joy Gould Boyum of the Wall Street Journal remarked, "The film situates villainy in homosexuals and physically disabled men." That is a gross injustice to the film, even if there is a flamboyant man, a limping fellow and an albino. Moreover, it overlooks the interracial relationship that could be considered progressive.Roger Ebert wrote that the film "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." This is quite true. The scenes are beautiful and the plot is a bit bizarre in more than a few places.I think this is one that needs to be re-examined. Eastwood really threw himself into the picture, both directing and starring (and doing his own stunts). The humor and deadpan delivery is excellent, and just the great shots that were achieved deserve some recognition.While as of now (January 2014) the film exists as a widescreen DVD, it would look great on Blu-ray and perhaps it is not too late to get a commentary from Eastwood or others involved in the picture. George Kennedy (now 88) probably has few good years left in him.

fedor8 Something tells me Clint isn't too picky about the scripts he agrees to do. I can only imagine how bad the novel this crap is based on must be. Plenty of nonsense had been crammed into this two-hour filmic banality.Clint rejects an illicit offer from one of his students – fine; we'll ignore that. It made for a vaguely amusing semi-anecdote which served to prove to us the stereotypically absurd wholesomeness of the hero's impeccable character. We then find out he collects art "masterpieces" for just a fraction of their real value; how he achieves this isn't explained at all, but we'll ignore this bit of hooey too, coz I really couldn't give a rat's ass about over-rated, over-priced canvas blotches. But then the real nonsense kicks in. Clint's former boss is a fat albino who is forced to live in near-complete darkness at all times; no, I can't ignore this at all. How the hell does a man with such a debilitating condition climb up the government ranks all the way to the top of the CIA? Do government suits scout dark hospital rooms and peruse through medical files for potential albino talent? Have YOU ever seen or heard of a top government official who was born a paraplegic, an albino, or with some other extreme, crippling affliction? Even the James Bond franchise hasn't yet dabbled with albino villains or albino Ms or Qs. How could Clint's character possibly be so STUPID not to suspect that the black girl is a plant? (I don't mean a tree or a flower; the only vegetable in this context is guy who concocted the novel.) Perhaps the book goes into greater details, explaining how huge his Ego must be, not allowing him to just consider the possibility than not all stewardesses would offer him sex within seconds of seeing him for the first time, hence that they might have ulterior motives. But fine, not all action-movie heroes have to be the brightest cookies.The worst aspect of TES, however, is its essential premise: the micro-film with a biological warfare formula. Can you possibly guess the "great plot-twist"? It turns out to be a fake formula, its sole purpose being to make the Russkies hunt it down. WHY though? As soon as the Soviets get the formula, they will test it – and then realize that it's fake! So what could the U.S. government POSSIBLY gain with this silly, expensive, overly complex ploy? Nothing at all. In fact, they lose a few men, and have to dish out $120,000 to Clint - and even listen to his self-righteous political speeches. Then again, perhaps I am too stupid to understand how watching the Soviets waste a few weeks on a formula that doesn't work might be a very clever idea, or of what military or strategic use this might be. As soon as the Russians realize it's fake they'll renew their search for the real one. Or did Clint the Eastwood seriously expect us to think that Russians would lock up the formula in some safe, never to be looked at again, once they got hold of it? Then again, I doubt Clint expects his viewers to think at all; nothing new, considering how many dumb movies he'd directed. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh… and duh. The fact that Clint is forced to CLIMB A MOUNTAIN UNDER DANGEROUS CONDITIONS in order to carry out the "sanction" – without even knowing who that target is – only adds to the unintentional comedy. Couldn't he just have WAITED for their expedition to come back down? Or terminated his target before the climb? Since when is it only possible to assassinate a mountain-climber DURING a mountain climb? Perhaps the only way to kill an astronaut would be to wait for him to fly to the Moon… For some reason, the only way to find out the identity of his target was to join the mountaineering expedition. Did that work? No, but all the members of the expedition got killed in accidents anyway! I'd expect to find this kind of nonsense in a parody of a thriller, not a thriller itself.Perhaps the movie was simply cursed by having a notable "Plan 9 From Outer Space" alumni on board. Gregory Walcott; the comic-relief(?) that Clint gets to beat up every once in a while, lending further credence to theories that this movie was in fact a parody.One of many silly plot-twists – and one even a vodka-gorged chimp could see an hour in advance – is that George Kennedy is the man Clint had been looking for all along. Kennedy was far too friendly with Clint, and this made him instantly suspicious. (Which goes to show how clichéd the script is.) Kennedy suddenly develops a limp, the one clue Clint had to go on, just because it got cold. So the limp leg was in no danger of limping during those earlier practice climbs back in the States? Duh, duh, duh. Very predictably, Clint doesn't kill him. Instead, he kills thousands of the viewer's brain-cells.Worse yet, this goofy little thriller has a political message to convey, as well. You must have met people who considered both sides of The Cold War to have been equally vicious and evil; everyone knows at least one idiot of that sort. Well, that is precisely the idiotic message: both sides are ideologically corrupt, and it doesn't matter whose side you're on. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh… So the U.S. had millions of labour camps i.e. gulags too? Long lines for toilet paper? Millions of people trying to get OUT (of the USSR) as opposed to trying to get IN (the U.S.)? This is typical malcontent, left-wing drivel written by a closet Marxist. Clint, a paid assassin, moralizes through his clenched teeth, giving pacifist speeches about double-standards in super-power politics. It doesn't get dumber than that.