Exciting Though Improbable WWII Adventure

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2001)

"Where Eagles Dare" is a very exciting and expensively mounted movie. If you are willing to put aside all logic and common sense and treat it as pure escapism, then it is a very entertaining movie.
Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood lead a group of commandos on a mission to rescue a captured American general held in a highly fortified and remote castle held by the Germans in WWII. Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt join the gang along the way. The are more twists and turns in the story than in a German pretzel factory. Double crosses and triple crosses abound.
There are the usual stereo-typical Germans, the ruthless Gestapo officer, the stern commander, the visiting General and tons of German soldiers. No problem, ole Clint mows down a whole battalion single handedly. Burton cuts down a company or two himself and both he and Eastwood emerge with nary a scratch. And those portable bombs..how did they manage to pack so many and manage to get them so strategically placed that no one finds them?
"Where Eagles Dare" reminds me of the old Saturday Afternoon serials...with a budget.