I couldn't believe when i saw the bad comments about the film. Im an adventure fan and watched all kinds of adventure movies, but neither of them touched my heart so deeply.This was epic , realistic, and philosophic. At the end i had an understanding of what nature can do to us and how it is powerful. Human cant rule the nature , we must find out how to live in harmony with the nature. And love. It brings all the happiness and the sorrow. Its just like the nature. I was very inspired after watching the film so i started mounteneering. But many people will be scared of the mountains in my opinion after wathcing Nord Wand. It shows how an exciting adventure can go terribly bad. I really recommend this film. I think everyone must watch, its a undiscovered masterpiece.

Big picture this: it's 1936 in the 'old world'. Post-depression Europe is just awakening from the dredges of a dark period. At center stage though awaits Germany. Now the cacophonous chant, 'Heil Hilter', echoes throughout resurgent Deutschland. Well, in the film that catchy phrase is decried at least five times. Once though, I heard 'Bye Hilter'!The new Chancellor, Mr. Hilter had grand designs for his people. And with the capitol, Berlin, hosting the Summer Olympics what better stage was there to set out on world domination?For sure, the Third Reich is in search of fresh heroes. Hilter dearly wants to showcase the German youth's indomitable spirit. The whole world watched with tense anticipation.Two young Bavarian Alpinists, Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser are dolefully deployed as hard boots down on the ground in the Wehrmacht's Bavarian Mountain Brigade. Often we are shown that these two German recruits dream of greater heights, ostensibly far away from the army. Mr. Hilter and his band of merry henchmen dream big too. The rest of Europe though shudders at learning those lofty thoughts.Soon, both the would-be adventurers and the Deutsch Reich find a common target. Their goal is to scale Europe's last unscaled mountain: the Eiger North Face. However, local lore gave it a different name: the Ogre Face.Located in the Swiss canton of Berne, the Eiger peak poses a formidable challenge. A year earlier, the towering granite peak claimed the lives of two other ace Munchen mountaineers: Karl Sedlmayer and Max Mehringer.Enter the German media at the behest of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry...Luise, an aspiring reporter with the Berliner Zeitung also hails from the same Bavarian village as the two main protagonists. Straight away she's hot on their tail (Toni's). So are two Austrian crack mountaineers.The Austrian duo too aspires to be good Nazis. And the 'true' German males have visions of grandeur. Their mission from on high is financed by none other than their local SA chapter. It couldn't be any other way. They said so!Now we have all the right ingredients for a grand spectacle. If you can set aside the 'politiks' couched in most sentences, 'North Face' is a fine film about courage and grace under extreme pressure. Hemingway would've approved of the movie script. I'm sure of that.Along the way director, Phillip Stolzl even hints that 'love' is indeed the motivation behind everything. Work, play, ambition, desire and even sport are all affected by this magical elixir. Why else would man take to scaling high mountains while battling their inner selves as well as nature? And the Eiger rising straight up to more than 13,000 feet proves to be a worthy challenge even fearsome foe.On the other hand, the Austrian team competition lends its hands/feet/heads though unwittingly to help speed fate to the pinnacle. For certain, the film's finale is nothing short of a spellbinding, heart pounding adventure at its zenith.No doubt, Nordwand is the epitome of all mountain climbing films; I haven't seen its equal.My verdict is this: a perfect 10 Stars.Alleluia!

Just watched the movie last night. Being German, one thing that bothered me was that neither the Toni Kurz, Andreas Hinterstoisser nor Luise Fellner character spoke with a Bavarian dialect. Wouldn't you expect that from somebody born and raised in Berchtesgaden? I do have to agree with an earlier comment: The Austrian team did not come across as a real competition to the German team. In fact, they were portrayed as being quite a miserable pair, technically and spiritually inferior to the German team.Otherwise I enjoyed the movie. Acting was solid and the story believable.

There are spoilers in this review.Extreme sports can often lead to tragedies, so surely one of the rules is to take every possible precaution against disaster. These four climbers in one of the most famous and dreadful tragedies of Alpine climbing made a number of basic errors, but their desperation to be the first to make this dangerous climb drove them to continue regardless.I read Heinrich Harrer's famous book "The White Spider" many years ago. The moment I saw this movie in the library, I thought, I wonder.. and then I saw the name Toni Kurz and I knew it was that nightmare climb.I've stayed in Grindelwald to ski, and passed Klein Scheidegg on the train and seen the infamous North Face. It's a lovely, peaceful place, seemingly, when the sun's out and the snow glistening as when we saw it. But as every skier knows, the weather can change very quickly and become a hell. Such is the situation these climbers, already in difficulties due to their mistakes as well, found themselves in.This story isn't just about the climbers, but about people who would go to the village just to see people attempt this infamous climb in which a number had already died and the ghoulishness of some of the media is depicted strongly - the media doesn't want an easy win in any endeavour, easy winners are boring to the media, it wants drama and change.Setting out one early morning, the first couple found when some way up that their crampons were missing. Later, after two groups of two were more or less climbing together, the last climber up removed the traverse rope that might later have saved their lives - he said, we won't be going down, the idea is to go up. One of the second couple had been badly injured on the head by a rock fall but couldn't be persuaded to descend, so greatly did he want to do this climb, so he put all the others at risk. But for him, it's possibly they might have succeeded and they should have forced him to descend, but I suppose they all felt they'd want to continue if in his place.It was a race to be the first to do this climb and others were camped below ready to try so every time there was a serious problem they still continued upward. Further up, when they were in some trouble and the weather had turned to a storm and the injured man was becoming a serious liability, Kurz lost a glove and it seems had no spares, or none left perhaps. If Kurz's hands hadn't been near-useless with frostbite by the time the rescue team was near and all he, the sole survivor by now, needed to do was come down on a rope, he might have reached safety. Instead, his hands couldn't help him and the rescuers couldn't reach him. Such are the mistakes that are made due to that spirit of wanting to win overcoming being careful. But at the same time, isn't it human nature that we don't want to go back? All the time I was watching this movie, I was remembering the book, so thank goodness I knew just how harrowing it was going to be. You are up there on that face, you are experiencing what it really was like. A nightmare.Uplifting and tragic and such a waste of four young lives.The Swiss rescue team who eventually set out to help had to wait for the weather to clear somewhat. As they said, some of them dying wouldn't help anyone, but I can imagine someone not local wanting to say, how selfish of them. Not so. They live there, they know their mountains, and they can despair of visitors who don't really appreciate all the dangers and put local lives at risk trying to save them.This is as much a warning as a wonderful movie.