Lots of Action  So Why is it so Tedious?

Rating: 6/10 (16 February 2001)

In 1969, Richard Burton was, if not at the height of his career, at least near it. Clint Eastwood had become America's number one action star. Alistair MacLean was second only to Ian Fleming in writing action-adventure/spy dramas. His THE GUNS OF NAVARONE had virtually created the film genre and his ICE STATION ZEBRA confounded both the critics and the studio by actually making money after being written off. So, it is understandable that WHERE EAGLES DARE was MGM's most highly anticipated `entertainment' of 1969. That is, until a ill-conceived ad campaign purporting it as a `spy spoof' resulte in half empty theatres during its first few weeks. Fortunately for MGM, most first run theatre owners had committed to a certain number of weeks in advance, enabling MGM to revise the ad campaign, and WHERE EAGLES DARE became one of the years big moneymakers. Not that it deserved it. MacLean novels are a great read, but they generally translate badly to the screen. Characterization is not one of MacLean's strong suits, to put it politely. In order to examine why EAGLES is not the great film GUNS is, one must remember that MacLean did NOT write the screenplay to GUNS. Veteran writer / producer Carl Foreman did, and Foreman imbued the characters in GUNS with complexity and tremendous personal conflicts. One has to care about characters in order to care what happens in a movie. This is virtually impossible in EAGLES, because the `heroes' as so one-dimensional as to be interchangeable with the `villians.' This is especially a problem with everyone wearing the same uniforms and speaking the same language with the same accents. Only Darren Nesbitt (who?) makes much of an impression as the efficiently creepy Gestapo Major Von Hapen.
Despite the `thrills' and `chills,' I found WHERE EAGLES DARE to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. However, in fairness to the movie, I would like to correct a misconception regarding the `anachronism' of using a helicopter to reach `Eagles Nest.' The film helicopter like the ones we know of today flew in 1939 in Germany (naturally). The only quibble I would have is that neither Burton nor Eastwood seemed surprised by it.