One of the best war action thrillers of all time, 1968's WHERE EAGLES DARE is a fast moving classic with an excellent cast.
Richard Burton stars as Major Smith, the English lead of an allied force that is dropped behind enemy lines to penetrate a snowbound mountaintop castle to rescue an American General.
The General has key information on the pending D-DAY plans and our team has only a few days to find him and present the information from getting out. (at least that's ONE reason they are there.....)
Clint Eastwood is Schaffer, the only American member of the team and Mary Ure is Mary Ellison, a beautiful blonde whose adept with a machine gun as she is with seduction.
Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra) wrote a great, fast moving screenplay with more twists and turns than you can anticipate.
Eastwood's Shaffer is as confused as we are as team members seem to move allegiances very quickly and the machine guns are pointed at many different folks throughout.
Burton and Eastwood are both in fine form.
There are some terrific scenes here, including the most suspenseful fights on top of a cable car since OO7 in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and a grand scale explosives work around our icy lair.
Eastwood trivia: he kills more people in this film as Shaffer than any other movie he ever made. The good news is, they are all Nazis and Gestapo and Eastwood's got good aim.
An excellent war movie AND action thriller, EAGLES flies high and gets an A.
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