Could have been real...

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2004)

Alistair McLean's movie adaptation is a thrill to watch.
Putting Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton together, was a masterpiece idea and it actually works!
The scenery in itself, in the Bavarian Alps, adds a touch of uneasiness about the entire story. Difficult to reach, difficult to conquer, but above all, difficult to escape from.
It's a cat and mouse game between British and German Intelligence services in World War Two. A later filmed adventure of this sort, but based on actual events, would add to the realistic perspectives shown in "Where Eagles Dare".
In fact, in 1976, a movie called "The Eagle Has Landed", inspired this time from a novel by Jack Higgins, dealt with the plan of the Third Reich to abduct and/or kill Winston Churchill!
If one considers that, "Where Eagles Dare" depicts something that could really have happened, only from the other side of the fence.
Everything in it is depicted in a very realistic and chilling manner and even if someone described it as James Bond in WWII, it is far less fantastic as one may come to think.
Granted, to perform such missions, someone ought to have been either a madman or so careless about his life, that luck would have had more importance than actual real tactics.
Nevertheless, this is an adventure movie that grips you from the very first instant and doesn't let loose to the end.
Far more paced than "Guns of Navarone", this is one of the few very good action movies ever made.
The music by veteran composer Ron Goodwin is memorable and unlike his other "war" installments so easily identifiable that you will be left humming it even when the movie is already finished.
It is more a cult movie, than an actual "history-making" one, but as i always say, they don't make them like this anymore.