Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Leofwine_draca THE EAGLE HAS LANDED is a great little 'what if?' WW2 movie, based on a novel by popular thriller writer Jack Higgins. The film features an all-star cast and a wonderfully gritty 1970s-era thriller atmosphere, in which the focus is on realism throughout rather than endless explosive action and the like. It's the final film in the career of MAGNIFICENT SEVEN director John Sturges, and it's a rather grand effort.The plot is a little similar to that of WENT THE DAY WELL. Himmler decides on a plan to kidnap Winston Churchill from Norfolk, and a crack team of Nazi troops are sent in undercover to get the job done. The first hour is all set up but it's never less than engaging, but it's once the troops arrive in England that the fun and endless tension really starts. Michael Caine is a typically likable lead and Donald Sutherland and Jenny Agutter share an unusual romance. The action, when it hits, is quite electrifying, and the film is unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes throughout. I loved it.

nzpedals The guy with the eye patch quotes Jung (I think), about the way fate sometimes delivers just the thing we really really want!The movie starts with news clips showing the daring rescue of Mussolini and tells us that Hitler gets the idea of doing the same to Churchill. Of course, we know that didn't happen, so why bother watching all the rest of it? Coz we also know that Higgins can write action-packed thrillers (Was this really his first book?)Having got the basic idea, the Germans set out to do a feasibility study and they have the ideal guy to do it for them, Steiner (Caine) and his band of paratroopers. Conveniently, they have captured an intact MTB AND a C47 plane.Their plan is to pretend to be from the Polish Free Force, but they wear their German uniforms underneath so that if (when) they are caught, they won't be summarily executed as spies.Right on very early on, the movie has the feel of a Higgins super- thriller and so I watch, wondering... how is it going to end? Other reviews will tell you if you don't want to watch it. There are a couple of silly scenes, the instant "love" between Molly and Devlin - nah, and the silly vicar, but apart from that it is all "GO".Treat Williams an American who replaces Larry Hagman's character is the best of the support cast, and he gets a great line.. "there's no such thing as death with honour, only death". Yeah, but tell that to the jingoists.

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.

Tweekums This film is unusual in that it is set during the Second World War but follows the actions of a German unit; Colonel Steiner and his men have been ordered to parachute into Norfolk and kidnap Winston Churchill during a visit to the county. To enable them to pass unnoticed by the locals the unit dress in the uniforms of Polish paratroopers. They aren't the only people working for their cause in the area; there is also an Irish spy, Liam Devlin, who arrived shortly before them and Joanna Grey, a South African woman who has lived in the area for some time. Everything is going according to plan until one of the village children falls into the mill pond; one of the Germans dives in and rescues her; he is drowned though and as he is caught up on the mill wheel the German uniform he was wearing under the Polish one is exposed. Now they must take the villagers hostage in the church until Churchill arrives. One of the villagers manages to escape and alerts the Americans stationed nearby... it looks as if it is all over for the Germans but Steiner manages to escape and makes a daring attempt to get to Churchill.It made a refreshing change to see a war film from the side of German soldiers; we are clearly meant to think of them as 'Good Germans' we even see Steiner attempt to save the life of a Jewish woman and Admiral Canaris, the man ordered by Hitler to prepare the plan went to the trouble of listing just about every major Nazi and suggesting they were mad! The acting was solid; I particularly liked Michael Caine's portrayal of Steiner and while some might have disliked Larry Hagman's portrayal of US Colonel Pitts I thought it was an entertaining portrayal of a man desperate to see action before his war was over. The only real criticism of the acting is of Donald Sutherland's Irish accent which seemed doubly bad when the character claimed to come from Belfast! The action was fairly solid and looked believable to my non-expert eye. The romantic subplot between Devlin and local girl Molly, played by Jenny Agutter, wasn't really necessary although it did serve to show he had a caring side.If you want to watch a slightly different war film I'd certainly recommend this; and if you enjoy this I'd recommend checking out the similarly themed 'Went the Day Well'; another film about Germans taking over an English village but this time made while the war was still very much on!