An idle bit of Clint Eastwood completism. He directed and starred. The script has three cowriters and is a bit of a dog. But stay for the cinematography and classic 1970s exploitation.
Before Indiana Jones but after James Bond, super-assassin art professor Eastwood is asked to perform a couple of last jobs in exotic Europe. Bloodless Thayer David is his handler at the mysterious C2 agency. Before this he turns down student Candice Rialson's offer of doing anything for a B, showing he has standards. (That's her alongside John Huston in the golf buggy in Winter Kills, showing that she too has standards.) This initial setup (about half the movie) is pretty boring, at least until Vonetta McGee arrives to convince him to take the second gig. The next part involves mountain climbing training at George Kennedy's ranch in Utah with foxy Brenda Venus. There's no montage. The final half-hour has Eastwood and frenemies climbing the Eiger (somewhere in Switzerland) which is mostly worthwhile because it's so clearly Eastwood himself up there. Except that reading the IMDB trivia later made me wonder where "there" was.
Along the way Eastwood expresses many amusing, non-PC sentiments. There's a repeat of someone being left in a scenic American West desert; a homage to Sergio Leone perhaps, and prefiguring Breaking Bad.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Vincent Canby.
