The Eagle Has Landed
                                                                                                                            
Director: John Sturges
Year: 1976
Rating: 6.5
The attempted kidnapping of Winston Churchill as depicted in this film was fictional and at the end of the film Churchill is on his way to Tehran to meet with Stalin and Roosevelt. If this had been a real operation, it would have been headed by Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was a legendary German commando who had rescued Mussolini from his captivity on the top of a mountain only accessible by cable car - by gliding in. Later he was behind the English-speaking Germans disguised as Americans at the Battle of the Bulge. And he set up an operation to kidnap or kill all three of the leaders in Tehran but the Russians learned of it and stopped it. This is the sort of film that Hollywood did well back in the 70s when war films were still popular. This one had to be tricky. The "heroes" of the film are Germans and an Irish traitor. The film makes them quite likable and honorable - but cheering for Nazis comes hard. You know that they won't succeed, but you kind of prefer them being captured to being killed. They do their best to soften them up with their leader trying to save the life of a Jewish woman and telling a German SS man to go to hell. But he is still a Nazi. And that episode with the Jewish woman feels much too contrived.




Himmler (Donald Pleasence) comes up with the idea to kidnap Churchill and bring him back to Germany. Admiral Canaris (a real historical character) played by Anthony Quale thinks he is nuts but has to go through the motions and assigns it to Colonel Radl (Robert Duvall) to come up with something that they can show and hope it goes away. But Radl sees a chance to make it work and brings in Devlin (Donald Sutherland), an Irishman teaching in Germany and Colonel Steiner (Michael Caine) to execute the plan. Much too easily they infiltrate England - Devlin as a game warden thanks to another traitor (Jean Marsh) and Steiner and his men as a Polish military unit.



That is a hell of a cast already and later Jenny Agutter shows up and falls for Devlin, Judy Geeson is a villager, Larry Hagman is an incompetent American Captain and Treat Williams is an American solider as well. Even though we know they can't do it, the film still generates a solid dose of tension and interest. This is directed by John Sturges and was his last film. According to Caine and a few others, Sturges seemed uninterested in the project and disappeared before it was even edited. I sadly would have edited the whole Agutter character out of the film - she wasn't needed and her romance with Devlin slowed the film down to a crawl at times and this film is all about pacing.