Duel au sommet

Les clichés narratifs éculés du sous-genre "drame d'aventures en montagne" (notamment K2) sont rafraîchis seulement dans les vingt dernières minutes. De plus, les personnages auraient pu être mieux développés. Cependant, grâce à une réalisation technique de qualité, de bons acteurs et surtout un environnement captivant sous l'Eiger (et dans ses environs), le film parvient à créer une tension solide, du drame et finalement de l'émotion. Un travail artisanal de qualité, une expérience émotionnelle puissante. Un blockbuster allemand. (24/01/2010)

An epic historical story about mountain climbers from the time before the Second World War, which has all the screenwriting pitfalls but also the benefits of an interesting historical story. After all, you will hardly come up with anything extra in this genre, but the shots of the mountains… those will never get old, not in a thousand years. (07/02/2019)

The mountaineering part is riveting, free of clichés, realistic (from a layman’s point of view) and often so much so that I would like to see a “making of", because often the mind boggles at “how they were able to film that without the actor actually hanging there at ten thousand feet in the middle of a snowstorm". The problem with the picture is that apart from the mountaineering part, there is a reporting part, following the ascent from basecamp. And that is absolutely unnecessary. Which makes it even more frustrating that it gets as much room as the climbing part. And this carries on until the last forty minutes of the movie. The creators rely heavily on the fact that the viewer already has some knowledge of the Eiger and so not much effort is lost on introducing the mountain. Which is a bit of a shame for those who aren’t “in the know". Somehow I had expected that this movie would be about the first successful attempt at climbing the Eiger by Harrer’s team, so it was a surprise and an enlightening experience to find out otherwise. (06/07/2009)