Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Rpgcatech Disapointment

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

bkoganbing Because he's upset the hard line Nazis of the S.S., paratroop commander Michael Caine and his men are sent on a suicide mission, to go to Great Britain and bring about the capture or death of Winston Churchill. The Nazis have intelligence that the Prime Minister will be on the coast inspecting fortifications and will be spending one night at a particular coastal village.The mission is to go in as Free Polish soldiers and take up residence in said coastal village. But ironically are given away by a random act of kindness by one of the Germans. After that Caine and his men are on their own.Ironically it's in English history that one finds a parallel for the predicament Caine is in. Sir Walter Raleigh under a death sentence, but the warrant unexecuted spent some 15 years in the Tower Of London until James I sent him on a mission to South America to find gold in the Orinoco River country of what is now Venezuela. No gold and Raleigh came back to face the ax. This was John Sturges's last action/adventure film and he put together a fine ensemble cast. English actors Anthony Quayle and Donald Pleasence play Admiral Carnaris and S.S. head Heinrich Himmler. John Standing is the village vicar, Treat Williams is American army captain, Jean Marsh is an enemy spy in the village and Judy Geeson is Standing's sister and a WREN. Standing out however in the cast is Donald Sutherland as a former IRA man who has gone over to the Nazis and he also is an enemy agent who gets a chance to fall in love with local Jenny Agutter. And Larry Hagman is a thick as a brick army colonel who blunders into the situation and bungles badly. the Gomer Pyle of colonels.Of course we know how this ends because history tells us Churchill was not assassinated. Or do you? You might be in for a surprise.

l_rawjalaurence To lovers of movie curiosities, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED offers the unique experience of watching actors speak in funny accents, whether it be Michael Caine's Cockney German, Jean Marsh's English Afrikaans, Robert Duvall's impeccable RP English, or (best of all) Donald Sutherland's Irish blarney. Beneath such superficialities, however, there lies a movie that makes some important points about human behavior during wartime. In one important sequence at the beginning, Caine's Col. Steiner is shown saving a Jewish girl from the clutches of the SS, even though he risks almost certain punishment as a result. Confronting the Obergruppenfuhrer (Joachim Hansen), Steiner makes an important point about showing humanity - even to one's sworn enemies. When a young girl falls into the jaws of a water-wheel, he sanctions one of his officers to go and rescue her, even if by doing so the officer reveals his true identity as a Nazi agent Steiner shows the same concern for the welfare of his men during their daring raid on England, and expects the same in return. When a wounded officer refuses to board the tug-boat taking him to safety, Steiner reminds him of his responsibilities as a human being, as well as being a member of Steiner's force: the officer has to go, even if he doesn't want to.Steiner's concern for others renders him a highly ambiguous character. On the one hand we should fear his ruthlessness, his obsessive desire to carry out the mission to capture Churchill (Leigh Dilley), even if the odds are stacked against him. On the other hand we admire him for his enduring loyalty to his men. Sutherland's Liam Devlin, a collaborator in the plan, proves equally ambiguous, his ruthlessness as a fixer and fighter has to be balanced against his concern for young Molly (Jenny Agutter), a nineteen-year-old villager who finds the kind of inspiration in Devlin that she could never discover in her long-term English boyfriend Arthur (Keith Buckley). Even Duvall's Colonel Radl is not entirely evil - while sanctioning the plot to kidnap Churchill in the first place, he realizes the risks involved, both to Steiner and his men, as well as himself. At one point he advises a junior officer to return home from the Channel Islands back to Berlin, so as to avoid the inevitable punishment that will result from the failure of the entire operation.While John Sturges' film contains some exciting action sequences - the final shoot-out between the Nazis and the Americans is particularly dramatically handled, with the chocolate-box English village forming a backdrop - the main focus of interest centers on the characters. Even though the Americans are portrayed as 'good' characters, rescuing the terrified villagers from Nazi captivity, their leader Col. Pitts (Larry Hagman) is both inexperienced in combat and entirely selfish, refusing to listen to the (good) advice of the men he commands. As a result he leads his troops into dangerous situations that could have been avoided if he had been a little more meticulous in his planning. Compared to Steiner, he seems rough-and-ready, the kind of man to avoid rather than admire. We are left to reflect on the nature of leadership, a quality that transcends national loyalties. The film itself stands up very well after forty years, even though its basic subject-matter was not new, even at the time of release. Alberto Cavalcanti's WENT THE DAY WELL (1942), based on a Graham Greene story, offers a chilling account of what might have happened if the Nazis had landed in the United Kingdom. THE EAGLE HAS LANDED sketches an equally convincing portrait, even though the British villagers seem remarkably sanguine about the presence of invaders in their midst. One of them (John Barrett) sardonically remarks: "Bloody foreigners again." Nonetheless its story remains highly plausible with a good surprise ending. Definitely worth looking at more than once.

aramis-112-804880 Watch out for spoilers: It's a cliché to say "the book is better." Some books are, since they have more depth of character. This is not, however, universal. Many screenplays, for obvious reasons, streamline novels, cutting out extraneous characters and making the stories flow much more smoothly. I can point out lots of cases where the movie actually is better.Not here. "The Eagle Has Landed" does streamline the story, naturally. The entire Preston subplot is excised. So is a lot of the back-and-forth yo-yoing of Radl to Himmler. In fact, Canaris has so little to do in this flick, I'm surprised they left him in at all. (Anthony Quayle is wasted as Canaris; Donald Pleasence has a field day as Himmler, and he lets us know what Hamlet means when he says one can smile and be a villain).On the plus side, the screenplay telescopes the story nicely. The novel takes place over months, while the screenplay seems to cover just a few days.Michael Caine is perfect as the German soldier with a conscience, while playing his cards close to his chest. Donald Sutherland is fine as the wry Devlin (replacing Richard Harris, and it's too bad we missed that performance). Larry Hagman, never the world's greatest actor, plays a character who was an idiot in the book and manages to be even more stupid in the movie (so although he did the part well enough as written, he can't help coming off looking unpleasantly like a buffoon; I'm surprised they didn't hire a comedic actor to play the part). I've never been a fan of Jean Marsh so I'm happy with her performance as the faux-British traitor. Jenny Agutter is pertly pretty; that's all that is required of her and that's all she does.But when all the shooting is over, one has never really connected to the characters. In the book one is surprisingly drawn to the IRA assassin and all the men fighting for their German fatherland (or, in Steiner's case, his real father, who is in Himmler's clutches). Confronted, in the movie, with dumb Americans and Brits, angry churchmen, supposedly compassionate characters studded over with Nazi regalia, and a moonstruck girl who shoots an unwelcome suitor in the back with both barrels to keep him from betraying her hit-man lover, there is really no one here for the film-goer to sympathize with.This is where the book's depth of character makes it superior. In the book you even feel disappointed when the Nazis lose, which shows the author's mastery. In many ways the screenplay and the editing improve on the story. But overall, once the shooting starts it's a bore, when that should be the exciting part.

Wuchak Michael Caine is outstanding as Colonel Steiner, an untamed German paratroop commander, who's covert mission is to go to Great Britain and kidnap Winston Churchill whilst on a retreat. The Germans are helped by Irishman Liam Devlin, played by Donald Sutherland, who essentially paves the way for their operation at a coastal hamlet (shot in Cornwall and Berkshire, England). Jenny Agutter plays Devlin's near-jailbait romantic interest in the quaint village, while Larry Hagman and Treat Williams play American officers, the former foolishly gung-ho. Robert Duvall and Donald Sutherland are also on hand as German officers.As you can see from the plot, this is an unconventional WWII picture. It doesn't feature the typical major battles or stereotypical characters and situations of most war flicks. Both Caine and Sutherland shine in their roles, especially Caine as the fearless Steiner. Many memorable moments abound.The film runs 131 minutes but feels shorter.GRADE: B+