Where Eagles Dare (1969)
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 70 155m
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Anton Diffring, Derren Nesbitt, Ingrid Pitt, Donald Houston
Synopsis:
Commandos selected to rescue a top Allied general from a Bavarian castle in the days leading up to the Second Front uncover traitors in their midst as well as back home.
Review:
MacLean's successful marrying of the WW2 and espionage genres (agents and double agents amid the uniforms) is here given the full James Bond treatment, complete with suavely accented Celt in the lead role and a Felix Leiter sidekick. The Austrian locations are stunning, the production first-rate (one or two model shots aside) and the action climaxes come one on top of the other; vehicles explode on cue and for no particular reason while carefully composed stormtroopers move in left of frame, machine guns blazing. Burton and Eastwood amble through it all as if they know exactly what they have to do, dropping rueful quips now and then to assure us they don't, and Ron Goodwin delivers a cracking score. The film became the template for a new kind of cynical war movie (Kelly's Heroes, The Wild Geese, Escape to Athena), all greatly inferior to it.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 70 155m
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Anton Diffring, Derren Nesbitt, Ingrid Pitt, Donald Houston
Synopsis:
Commandos selected to rescue a top Allied general from a Bavarian castle in the days leading up to the Second Front uncover traitors in their midst as well as back home.
Review:
MacLean's successful marrying of the WW2 and espionage genres (agents and double agents amid the uniforms) is here given the full James Bond treatment, complete with suavely accented Celt in the lead role and a Felix Leiter sidekick. The Austrian locations are stunning, the production first-rate (one or two model shots aside) and the action climaxes come one on top of the other; vehicles explode on cue and for no particular reason while carefully composed stormtroopers move in left of frame, machine guns blazing. Burton and Eastwood amble through it all as if they know exactly what they have to do, dropping rueful quips now and then to assure us they don't, and Ron Goodwin delivers a cracking score. The film became the template for a new kind of cynical war movie (Kelly's Heroes, The Wild Geese, Escape to Athena), all greatly inferior to it.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 70 155m
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Anton Diffring, Derren Nesbitt, Ingrid Pitt, Donald Houston
Synopsis:
Commandos selected to rescue a top Allied general from a Bavarian castle in the days leading up to the Second Front uncover traitors in their midst as well as back home.
Review:
MacLean's successful marrying of the WW2 and espionage genres (agents and double agents amid the uniforms) is here given the full James Bond treatment, complete with suavely accented Celt in the lead role and a Felix Leiter sidekick. The Austrian locations are stunning, the production first-rate (one or two model shots aside) and the action climaxes come one on top of the other; vehicles explode on cue and for no particular reason while carefully composed stormtroopers move in left of frame, machine guns blazing. Burton and Eastwood amble through it all as if they know exactly what they have to do, dropping rueful quips now and then to assure us they don't, and Ron Goodwin delivers a cracking score. The film became the template for a new kind of cynical war movie (Kelly's Heroes, The Wild Geese, Escape to Athena), all greatly inferior to it.