Where Eagles Dare
Director: Brian Hutton
Year: 1968
Rating: 9.0
There just aren't many more satisfying popcorn
movies than this one. It is actually worthy of the 158-minute running time.
It never slacks off, never gets boring and constantly surprises as it ratchets
up the tension as it goes. I have probably seen this a couple of times but
not in decades and I was as tense as a cat on a block of ice twenty stories
up. It was long enough ago that I had forgotten the clever twists and
how it ended. I look forward to watching it again in about ten years. It
was built to keep the audience in their seats, on their toes and to have
them happy when they left. Based on a script from Alistair MacLean that he
later turned into a best-selling novel.
Clint Eastwood is the junior partner in
this one to Richard Burton. Eastwood wasn't yet the known quantity that he
was to become with the Dirty Harry films. He basically had the Spaghetti
Westerns in his basket at this point but had put himself into a genre corner.
Though his character here in a lot of ways resembles his characters from
the Westerns - taciturn (he asked the writers to cut out a lot of his dialogue),
cold-blooded and deadly efficient at what he did - it took him to a different
genre and the film was a huge success. Burton of course was already famous
and apparently was the one who got this project started by telling his agent
he wanted to star in a film in which he was the action hero and isn't killed
for his two adopted sons. They called in MacLean to write a script. Amazingly,
Burton is quite good considering that he was drunk much of the time and would
go off on benders for days with his drinking buddies.
It isn't at all believable of course, but
who cares. Just go with it. A small group of British commandos who all speak
perfect German along with Schaffer (Eastwood) from the American army are
given a mission to rescue an American General who was captured when his plane
crashed. He knows the location for the Second front - ie the Allied invasion
of Europe. They have to get him out before he talks. But early on one suspects
that it is more than that. A female operative (Mary Ure) is sneaked aboard
the plane with only Burton knowing. One of the men is killed after parachuting
- from a broken neck. Purposefully.
One of them is a traitor. Their agent
on the ground is played by the lovely Ingrid Pitt in her typical cleavage
revealing German beer girl manner. The General is being kept in a castle
(Hohenwerfen Castle in Austria) that can only be accessed by the cable car.
There are hundreds of troops everywhere. The Gestapo are about. The plan
is brilliant and precise and as I said fairly unbelievable. But just
seeing it work and all come together is a total pleasure.
