Greatest WW2 film ever

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2003)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** As a child i was obsessed with this film. Completely and totally obsessed. And i haven't forgotten or even lost my love for this fantastic movie, which is about the best film i can rememeber.
(INCLUDES SPOLIERS)
Major Smith (Richard Burton) and his team of commandos, incluing an American, Leitenant Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), are assigned to break into a Bavarian castle during WW2 and spring out a US General who has been captured and incarcerated there. Things seemingly don't go to plan as two team members are murdered, and three more are taken prisoner before the only two remaining members, Burton and Eastwood, are able to gain access to the castle, via a double agent and an either member of the team, brought along secretly.
The American General is interrogated by nazi officers and threatened with drugging if he doesn't reavel Allied plans for the Second Front. He is then introduced to the three captured officers, who are in reality Double Agents whose job it was to ensure that that misson would fail. However, Burton takes over the interrogation by revealing himself to be a double agent, and claiming to his "fellow german officers," and claiming that the three agents are fakes who are attempting to infiltrate the german high command.

Burton tells the three that the only way they can remove suspicion on their name is to prove to him that they are double agents, and tells them that the way to do this is to each list all their contacts in Britain who are making life for MI6 very difficult. Having taken the lists, Burton then reveals that he is not a double agent at all, and that the three, Thomas, Christian, and Barclay, were telling the truth after all. The meeting is then interrupted by a gestapo Major, but Eastwood kills him along with the Nazi officers, and then takes the traitors prisoner.
The group then "attempt to create enough confusion to get out alive," which somehow they manage to do, figting tooth and nail through the castle, the garrison, inlcuiding a suberb sequence where Burton has to battle two of the traitors on top of a calbecar high above the village. When the group finally make it back to the rescue plane, the MI6 boss there to meet them, Colonel Turner, is revealed to be the Nazi spy kingpin. Burton allows him to commit suicide by throwing himself out of the plane.
In all this is an excellent film which uses great writing, fine acting, a great score, some fabulous locations, and good direction to create perhaps one of the most complete and enteraining WW2 films ever made.