One of the many films my dad can point at and say that this is his favorite movie furthermore one of his favorite Clint Eastwood movies. Where Eagles Dare is one of those movies, I've seen though has been ages since I've seen it, and granted all I remember is so many plot twists of who is who and not having a good clue of what is going on. Now having watched the movie I'll admit I understand a tiny bit of the movie but still don't have a good idea of the whole concept of who is who, and really has to do with the accents, but it wasn't just that when there was a huge amount of green screen format in terms of if the background is real or not, which really if your restoring a movie to a better format, maybe leave it to a standard format not a high definition format.
A team of Allied soldiers stages a daring rescue mission during World War II, a U.S. General is being held captive in an imposing castle fort, high in the Bavarian Alps. The audacious plan calls for Lt. Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), Maj. Smith (Richard Burton) and other operatives to parachute down wearing Nazi disguises. They'll penetrate the mountain outpost while undercover operatives assist them from within. But their mission changes when they discover that there's a traitor in their midst.
Richard Burton who was still married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time, said in his own words "I decided to do the picture, because Elizabeth's two sons said they were fed up with me making films they weren’t allowed to see, or in which I get killed. They wanted me to kill a few people instead." So, Burton approached producer Elliot Kastner "and asked him if he had some super-hero stuff where I don't get killed in the end." Now I don't know what the producer told him, but if it were me I would of told Burton that you're way too good to be a super-hero just star in a World War II movie, just like when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas where on vacation in Hawaii together Spielberg told him that he wanted to make a James Bond movie, then Lucas said I got a much better idea for you Steven, which lead to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The film itself to me is still an entertaining war movie from start to finish, like I'll admit I had my thoughts on what this movie was before I watched it, as if the movie was a special operations unit infiltrating a large Castle and the task force have to fight their way out at the end of the movie for which has a great action sequences in the film, though the story itself is somewhat confusing to me moreover maybe just leave a movie to a standard definition and not restore it, to a high definition format, but will get to that later. Like in actual normal sense of telling a war story whether you're in a Great War or WWII setting, you usually have to set in in a simplest of storytelling for which in Where Eagles Dare's simplest storyline, a joint operation is tasked with rescuing a General with time not their sides they have to infiltrate whatever it takes and fight their way out to succeed in the mission that's it well, once we get through the end of the second act to the beginning of the third act it appears that three British operatives are spies or not spies though I'm not going to tell who, but the whole concept of who is a traitor just confuses me mainly because they all sound British and I strongly doubt that any Englishman would ever side with Nazi Germany during World War II, but on the other hand this is a late sixties movie and when it comes to accents it's basically out of the question during those kind of sixties films and yet it would help to understand the story if all the British traitors were disguising their German accents moreover that would make the story more sense to me but the fact that Burton says that everyone is a traitor then says they’re not traitors I just feel like saying "okay Burton you're losing me right now", hell in all honesty the only character I can relate to the most is Clint Eastwood's character because he was more confused about the mission as I was so in all honesty I feel for Eastwood's character through the course of the movie. The other thing that bothers me about the movie is that some of the scenes are shot via green screen and a lot of those scenes are when Eastwood and Burton are riding on the escalator for which we have what maybe the most boring suspense full scene ever, because it feels like it's taking for hours and all their doing is focusing on Eastwood and Burton riding on the escalator and their only half way and I'm having anxiety growing inside me because I feel like I'm about to scream in terms of how bored I'm getting, then we have another scene where he's fighting with two other traitors and it's like the ziplining episode of South Park and I'm Cartman screaming "I'M SO F**KING BORED", and again the fact that they're shot on green screen and we can see that the background shots look fake but again after watching the film again I really can't help but laughing because it wasn't meant to be funny and yet this film was made in the late sixties moreover commencing the new era where Richard Nixon becomes President of the United States. But the important fact I should add is that the scenes featuring the castle and the cable car together were filmed using a scale model, so yeah, I guess I can understand not being able to shoot it for real or well, either way the more I'm talking about the possibilities the more I'm losing my mind so I'm just going to drop it right now. A side from the two flaws I have with the film I still consider it a great action packed war movie, hell even rank this in my top ten best war films, because again some of the action sequences are great to see, moreover I was impressed with their ways of finding ways out of the castle as well as planning their escape route to me that's just genius to see, I mean that would be situations I would be planning if I was a special operative. Both Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood were each of them have the great veteran and young inexperience chemistry is just great for them to portray on screen. So, if you're a war movie fan like I am, I would defiantly recommend watching this epic WWII film, because really, I've seen a lot of war movies and this film I defiantly see as one of the top ten best war films of all time.
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