Very Cliched And Dated

Rating: 5/10 (28 August 2003)

As a child I used to love all those old war movies set during the second world war but as I grew older I grew to dislike them . The majority of WW2 war films are American of course with a subjectively American point of view ie the Yanks won the war single handed . Not surprisingly two WW2 war films I still love today are DAS BOOT and CROSS OF IRON both of which are German productions . WHERE EAGLES DARE is a British film but suffers from many of the faults as its American counterparts
The screenplay was written by the late Alistair MacLean at a time when even his shopping lists would be produced into blockbusters . MacLean was a schoolteacher by trade but was famous for his meticulous research into the subjects he wrote about which makes WHERE EAGLES DARE doubly disappointing : The Germans/Nazis are portrayed as being cruel and very stupid , they`re also very easy to kill because unlike the British and American characters they find it impossible to shoot straight . In fact it`s totally ridiculous the way Eastwood`s character is able to fire two machine guns at once and throw back the Germans grenades without getting a scratch . In truth the Germans were very efficent on the battlefield while being very cruel off it.
Maybe I`m a bit hard on the movie since it`s not really a war film but a spy story set during the war , a bit like a James Bond film where Anton Differing is Blofeld . It`s also interesting to see Richard Burton play a very similar character to Bond since he was once a candidate to play Fleming`s character and if his performance here is anyhing to go by he might have outdone Connery as a sadistic assassin but probably would have been less convincing as a sophisticated womaniser . There`s also a brilliant twist where it looks like Smith isn`t who he claims to be but this is the only moment of brilliance in a film with cliched portrayals of Germans and rather poor production values ( Check out the myriad of scenes featuring some painfully obvious back projection ) which won`t appeal to an audience in 2003