Mutt & Jeff goes to war

Rating: 7/10 (2 March 2007)

***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Heart-pounding war action adventure with an assault on an impregnable mountain fortress by a squad of hand picked top British commandos, with a US Army Ranger thrown in for good measures. The assault is a rescue attempt of a captured US Army general who's one of the top men in Gen. Eisenhowers high command in the planning of opening up a second front in Western Europe. It turns out that the rescue team is actually infiltrated by a number of German Agents who are on to what the British/USA rescue team are up to. The German Agents turn out to be so stupid or incompetent that they help, more then hurt, the rescue operation from being exposed and taken out by an elite division, the Alpine, of hardened German SS troopers who happen to be the best mountain fighters in the world.
Lead by British Major Jon Smith, Richard Burton, the commandos penetrate the impregnable Nazi fortress the Scholoss Alder, high up in the Bavarian Alps, as easily as you would go down and penetrate your local bar, by just walking through the front door, to buy yourself a drink even with more then half of the British commandos being Nazi Agents! The non -stop action has both Smith and his US Ranger compatriot Let. Morris Schaffer played by a very confused and bewildered looking Clint Eastwood take on and wipe out almost the entire Nazi Alpine Division, as well as a squadron of the Luftawaffe. They do all this without as much as even having to get re-supplied with ammunition and explosives, which they seem to have an unlimited supply of, by an RAF/USAAF air drop.
Joined by pretty British Agent Mary Elison, Mary Ure, Smith and Schaffer make a shamble of the German Army who are even more buffoonish then they were portrayed to be in the darkest days of WWII in movies released by Hollywood in order to drum up moral at home and in the war zone. If the rescue of Gen. Carnaby wasn't hard enough it turns out that Smith is involved in a number of dealings with the Nazi's where he's as much as a a triple or even quadruple agent for both the British and German governments. All that leaves his comrade Let. Schaffer in such a state of confusion that he at one point out of sheer frustration almost killed him in order to make sure that Smith won't, which he did in the movie a number of times, double-cross him.
The hot and heavy action has the Germans use up thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition, small arms and artillery, on the three allied commandos, Smith Schaffer & Elison, and only scoring with a minor flesh wound on one of them, Smith's hand, for all their efforts. The way that the commandos dispatch the hapless and ineffective German troops actually makes the audience feel some sympathy for them in that their so outmatched that to cheer for the good guy UK/USA commandos over the bad guy Nazi German troops would be like cheering for a pit-bull to beat chihuahua in a dog fight.
Taking out more Germans, or Japaneses, then John Wayne could have ever dreamed of doing in all of his WWII action movies combined the trio then make a run for it to the nearest German Luftawffe airfield. Then again as easy as shooting fish in a barrel the dynamic and indestructible trio, Dick Clint & Mary, take out the helpless German troops without as much as breaking out into a sweat as they blow up a string of Nazi fighter planes and are then rescued by the British who land and take off almost unopposed and ferry them out. It's then that we find out, with the exception of Maj Smith who was on to him from day one, ***SPOILER*** that the entire operation was sabotaged by one of the top British MI6 intelligence officers who planned it!
You have to suspend belief and logic to enjoy "Where Eagels Dare" which doesn't at all, how could it!, seem to take itself really seriously in it's treatment of the evil Nazis. The movie has the Nazis look more like a German version of the Three, or in this case three thousand, Stooges then the ruthless and effective sh*t-kickers that they really were.