Where Eagles Dare (Clint Eastwood Collection)
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Movie Reviews of Where Eagles Dare (Clint Eastwood Collection)
Movie Review: WHERE AGLES DARE on Blu-ray
Summary: 3 Stars
Warner Bros. will celebrate Clint Eastwood's 80th birthday on May 31 by releasing a Blu-ray double feature of WHERE EAGLES DARE and KELLY'S HEROES on June 1. Both movies were directed by Brian Hutton.Movie Review: Classic War Movies
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the classic World War II movies that every collector must have in his or her collection. Richard Burton is amazing and so is Clint Eastwood. If you have never seen this movie, you don't know what your missing so, buy it, hunker down and watch it, and I promise you won't be sorry you did. Movie Review: Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
One of my all time favorites. The cinematography is a breathtaking backdrop to this clasic WWII storyMovie Review: One of the Best, Needs blu-ray release
Summary: 5 Stars
"Where Eagles Dare" is one of the wildest war movies ever. In terms of action and derring-do, many have compared it to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." I much prefer this film, which was released 12 years before Indy's first adventure. Written by Alistair MacLean, the writer of the classic "Guns of Navarone" and "Ice Station Zebra," most believe that this film, like the others, is based on the book. Actually it was the other way around. MacLean wrote this screenplay first and the novelization second. Still the book hit the stores first so most mistakenly believe that the film was based on the book.
The plot is seemingly simple: a group of British commandos and one American Ranger are assigned the task of rescuing a captured American General who is aware of the plans for the D-Day invasion. However like most of MacLean's books, the mission is a lot more complicated than that and much of the time the audience and the American Ranger Schaeffer (Clint Eastwood) are in a state of confusion. Richard Burton is superb as the British agent "Smith" leading the mission. Clint has very little to say: mostly he just says "hello" to the Germans before killing them with a silenced pistol. This was during the period when most critics proclaimed that Clint could no act and had very little to say as a result of it. (Who would have believed that during the condemnations of Eastwood's talent that rose to a cresendo during the early Dirty Harry films that Clint would become a multiple Oscar winner, a terrific actor and one of the most highly praised directors in show business history?) Clint has little to say during this film but he must kill literally hundreds of Germans with various guns and explosives. (In one scene he actually shoots two machine-guns at one time.") Burton and Eastwood are assisted by 2 beautiful women: a pretty British agent (and Burton's girlfriend and partner) named Mary (Mary Ure) and a beautiful German agent named Heidi. This role was one of the first played by the incredibly gorgeous Ingrid Pitt, who went on to a legendary career playing lesbian vampires in various Hammer horror films.
This film features massive explosions, escapes, beautiful snow-covered scenery and great action sequences. The best is a great fight between Burton and 3 German double-agents atop a cable car high in the mountains. Boy, does this action sequence look real. The stuntmen really earned their money on this film. I read recently that Eastwood performed the bulk of this scenes with Burton's stuntmen since the action scenes were so numerous, and the film so physical.
This film was a massive hit for MGM. Yet it has been released by Warner Bros. as part of its Clint Eastwood collection with no extras. This film cries out for a deluxe version with numerous retrospectives. It really cries out for a blu-ray release.
If you want to relax with a long, exciting, entertaining though highly implausible W.W.II adventure, you cannot do any better than "WHere Eagles Dare."
Movie Review: Eh... There's far better WWII movies
Summary: 2 Stars
Ok, I had high hopes for this movie, especially being a cool plot idea where Allied spies infiltrate a hard-to-reach German stronghold. Starring Clint Eastwood also added to this hope. In reality, this hope was dashed by annoying acting performance from both Clint Eastwood and most especially Richard Burton, who now is top of my list of most annoying actors ever alongside Hayden Christensen. The problem here, is that Burton takes the lead in a condescending "father-knows-best" style, and isn't even cooperative with Eastwood in the movie. For 2 guys that are supposed to be on the same side, I found myself asking through the entire movie what Eastwood was even doing there.
Pros :
- Breathtaking scenery
- Cool idea
Cons :
- Poorly executed
- Major historical inaccuracies (this is more forgivable since, afterall, it *is* a movie)
- No actual German spoken in the movie. Subtitles are fine. Why not use them?
- Eastwood hardly speaks in this movie, is portrayed as woussy second-fiddle to Burton, which is not Eastwood at all. Eastwood should be the alpha male here. Who knows why he took a backseat role in this movie.
- Burton = annoying acting and voice. Seriously, why is this guy even allowed to exist? The lines he utters when walking into the German training camp make me want to strangle him.
Overall, there's far better WWII movies out there (such as Saving Private Ryan, Kelly's Heros, The Dirty Dozen, and the Band of Brothers series), so I don't see any point wasting time with this one.