Nice if you like this kind of war movies, but I prefer more realistic ones.

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2005)

In the late sixties, many people still weren't able to fully cope with the horrors of the Second World War and at the same time they also had to deal with their sons, brothers or men going to Vietnam, fighting and dying for a war they didn't have much to do with in the first place. So the least they wanted to see was a war movie that showed all the horrors, all the blood, the wounded and the dying into every little detail. Still, war has always been a fascinating subject for many people and Hollywood knows that too. All they had to do was to 'invent' a new kind of war movies. That's why they came up with the idea of the more adventurous war movies with some true American silver screen heroes kicking some German ass...
"Where Eagles Dare" is a fine example of such movies. It tells the story of an American general who has been shot down over enemy territory in a British aircraft in 1944. The Germans keep him prisoner in the nearest SS headquarters, a highly defended and impenetrable castle on top of a mountain in the German Alps. But what the Germans don't know is that the general knows all about the plans for D-Day and before they get the chance to find out, the British secret service will attempt to rescue him with a daring operation. But as soon as the mission unfolds, double and triple agents begin to appear in the ranks of the rescue team. And to make things even more complicated: an American Lieutenant was assigned to the mission, but no-one seems to know why...
I don't want to bee too negative about this film, but the problem is that I'm more a fan of the realistic war movie that shows the war the way it really was. I rather like to see people from both sides die, because that's a lot more like it was in reality. Watching this movie, I couldn't help noticing the fact that those five or six men really were better than Superman himself. Not only were they able to get into the highly defended castle that lay on top of a mountain and with a fully manned army barracks at the base, they were even able to get out of it alive without getting badly wounded. And as if that wasn't even enough, they even find the time to kill about 500 Germans (including a lot of SS troops, which were the best Germany had to offer) and to use so much dynamite that it is almost enough to blow that castle right off that mountain.
Something else that bothered me was the language. When I heard someone in the beginning of the movie say that they all were able to speak German fluently, I hoped to hear people like Clint Eastwood speak German. But what happened? They all kept speaking English, making us believe that it was another language, by adding some other intonation so now and then. OK, I prefer to hear the Germans speak their native language, but if they all have to speak English, so be it. But can someone please explain me then why sometimes the Germans, when they weren't interacting with the main characters did speak German??? There is no logical explanation for that. All it does is to emphasize that the main characters don't speak German but English and that really bothered me.
But not everything about this movie was bad. If you are a fan of the more adventurous type of war movies, than this is definitely worth a watch. It offers plenty of suspense, a lot of twists and more than enough action which will keep the adrenalin pumping from the beginning until the end. And on top of that you even get a cast with some very well-known actors (although there aren't as many famous names in it as in other war movies of that time period). I know I may have been a bit too hard on the makers of this movie. I guess it's a typical product of the sixties and if you watch it like that it certainly isn't bad. That's why I still give it a 6, perhaps a 6.5/10.