North Face (2009)

In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a whole genre of German movies called "mountain films." Mystical films that strove for some vague spirit of the mountains (I've only seen one of these: Leni Riefenstahl's bizarre "The Blue Light"). Director Phillip Stolzl tries to bring back the genre with this big budget German production. Based on the true story of a pair of ex-Nazis who try to ascend the last unconquered climb in the Alps: the north face of the Eiger. What starts off as a historical drama quickly becomes an edge-of-your-seat nail-biter. That's a lot of hyphens. You really feel like you're there on the mountain. I don't recommend this if you're afraid of heights. During much of the movie my heart was in my throat, even a climber accidentally dropping his glove has the impact of a car chase. A limp (and fictional) love story is shoehorned in and most of the scenes off the mountain are not as effective. The whole argument of "Why climb a mountain? Because it's there" makes a little more sense after seeing this. Since a movie was made of these events, and the protagonists are Nazis, you can probably guess it didn't go well. Nazis are stupid.