Movie Review: Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Time to jump in the wayback-machine and review a “classic”. I only put quotations there to throw people off as to what my opinion could be, you’re gonna have to read it to find out what I think about it, you lazy bastards.

Ladies and gentlemen… “Where Eagles Dare”.

Set during the second world war, we follow a squad of British (and one American) soldiers as they make an attempt to infiltrate a nazi-filled castle and save an American general. So now we have our rescue operation. And is the plot any good? Yeah, I’d say so. What I like about it is that as they early during the movie get behind enemy lines, which helps give the movie an extra layer of suspense, since they have no real allies where they are, it’s all on their shoulders. There are also a few clever little twists and turns throughout, giving the plot a little extra unpredictability, which is something I really enjoyed. So yeah, the plot here is really good.

The characters here aren’t necessarily the deepest, but the few that we do have as our main leads I found to be quite entertaining. Richard Burton (R.I.P) plays Smith, a British army major with a few tricks up his sleeve. As we go through the movie we learn that he’s a tricky bastard who always seem to be one step ahead of everyone else. And Burton is great in the role. Then we have Clint Eastwood as Schaffer, an American lieutenant that has been assigned to Smith’s rescue squad. He’s basically an Eastwoodian stoic badass… which I have no problem with, as it creates an interesting contrast with the conniving Smith. And Eastwood is really good in the role. Then we have Mary Ure (R.I.P) as… Mary. She’s a British agent that the guys team up with during their mission. And she’s both intelligent and a badass. And Ure is really godo in the role. As for the other characters, they’re not really worth talking about, because they don’t quite have the same focus as the three I just talked about. But I can at least say that the supporting cast, containing people like Michael Hordern, Robert Beatty, Neil McCarthy, and Brook Williams, is great. ’tis a well acted movie.

The score for the movie was composed by Ron Goodwin and it’s pretty fucking great. It’s quite big and loud, opting for a more exciting a triumphant sound with no real subtlety in it. And it makes for some real ear candy as it helps add a lot of excitement throughout the movie.

This movie was directed by Brian G. Hutton (R.I.P) and I think he did a really good job here. I mentioned that the plot has a good amount of tension to it, but a lot of tension in this movie comes from Hutton’s direction, which really helps sell the frantic situation that our heroes have found themselves in. He also handled the action scenes very well, they’re really exciting.

This movie has been well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 90% positive rating. On Metacritic it doesn’t even exist. And on imdb.com it has a score of 7,7/10.

“Where Eagles Dare” is an exciting and very well crafted war movie. IT has a really good plot, okay characters, really good performances, great music, and really good direction. Time for my final score. *Ahem*. My final score for “Where Eagles Dare” is a 9,62/10. So it gets the “SEAL OF APPROVAL!”.

My review of “Where Eagles Dare” is now completed.

Attacking a nazi castle? Is this Wolfenstein?