Great spy and action movie with twisting plot

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2005)

Take Alistair MaClean's "Guns of Navarone" and "Ice Station Zebra" then you have the recipe for "Where Eagles Dare." Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton are sent on an Alpine spy/sabotage mission behind enemy lines aimed at confusing and delaying the Germans. It's interesting to see Eastwood take seconds to Burton's acting in this picture. Eastwood was just coming off his major success with the Italian westerns and was an international star, but wasn't an American leading man. This film marks the last time he wasn't in the star/leading man part. Dotted throughout the movie are wonderful actors who turn in solid performances. Accomplished thespians Patrick Wymark, Donald Houston and Derrin Nesbitt, to name a few, are faces many will recognize from UK television roles. An interesting point made in the film is the ordinary German soldier's sometime disdain for the fanatic Nazi SS or Gestapo trooper. This is shown through one German officer's unwillingness to comply with the local Gestapo major. It's rare to see that kind of "layer" added to the German side of a plot in an American picture. Generally, they are always just treated as bad guys to be dispatched in hails of lead or burning explosions. The film holds up well over time, and there's little to date it to 1969, save for the youthful faces of many of the actors. Some 36 years after its release, "Where Eagles Dare" continues to be entertaining. It certainly beats the current crop of "big gasoline driven explosion" movies that have no plot. It is heavy on action and plot, but it has a running time of 155 minutes -- plenty of time to develop plot and action.