Where Eagles Dare - 1968

A flawless piece of winter pulp. Pour a Scotch, turn up the volume, and don’t ask where they got all those extra magazines. ★★★★☆ (4/5) "Broadsword calling Danny Boy... this article is complete."

On paper, Burton as an action hero is absurd. He looks like a Shakespearean scholar who wandered onto a battlefield. Yet, he is the film’s secret weapon. As Major Smith, Burton doesn’t run; he prowls. He doesn’t yell orders; he murmurs them with a smirk. He is the smartest man in the room, playing a game of 4D chess while everyone else is playing checkers. His climactic speech on the castle’s ramparts—where he unravels the film’s three (!) separate double-crosses—is a masterclass in exposition. He makes treachery sound like poetry. And then there is Clint Eastwood. Fresh off The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , Eastwood was already a star. But here, he plays the ultimate supporting role: the muscle. Schaffer doesn’t have a character arc. He has a machine gun. For the first hour, Eastwood has approximately twelve lines. Most of them are “Yes” or “No.” where eagles dare 1968

Critics in 1968 were mixed. They called it “overlong” and “ludicrous.” They weren’t wrong. The plot is a Gordian knot of code names (Broadsword to Danny Boy, anyone?). The German soldiers have the aim of stormtroopers from Star Wars . And the ending, where the heroes casually fly away in a captured Nazi plane, defies all physics. A flawless piece of winter pulp

When the explosives come out and the German soldiers start falling, Eastwood turns into a grim reaper in a parka. One scene in particular has entered legend: Eastwood, standing in the middle of a courtyard, gunning down dozens of SS troops while Burton calls the cable car from a phone booth. It is violent, implausible, and absolutely glorious. It is the moment the movie stops pretending to be a thriller and admits it is a carnival ride. Modern CGI would have built the Schloss Adler on a green screen. Director Brian G. Hutton and cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson did something crazier: they went to the Hofburg in Fieberbrunn, Austria, and filmed on actual mountain peaks. this article is complete