An archetypal schoolboy adventure, containing a sufficient variety of excitements...

Rating: 9/10 (2 July 2003)

This time Eastwood plays Shaffer, a professional killer in the American army, who joins an international commando team, led by a British major, Jonathan Smith (Richard Burton).
The group is sent to the Bavarian Alps supposedly to rescue an American general from the hands of the German Army, who possesses highly valuable information on the impending D-Day invasion of Europe... Actually the high-ranking officer is a fake, and the real purpose of the mission is to discover which one of their team is a Nazi double agent who has succeeded in penetrating British intelligence...
Aided by five other commandos, Burton makes the daring parachute drop into enemy territory, and his commando squad succeeds in entering the inaccessible fortress where the general is held, with the assistance of an intelligent operative, Mary Ellison (Mary Ure) whose presence is a secret to the other men...
If you can stop being so serious, you can enjoy another piece of escapism, as scenic and exotic as the Aegean... The film contains a number of twists and turns, treachery and surprise revelations, a fiery battle with so many explosions within a castle, a hand-to-hand struggle to the death atop a moving cable-car, and Eastwood driving a speeding motorbike through a blinding snowstorm while on a terrifying mountain road...