Movie review: Where Eagles Dare

First off, let me say that I am playing the shit out of NCAA 08, mostly while drunk. My advisor is expecting a write up on what I want to do my thesis on and there’s no way he’s getting it before the month ends. And French is whipping my ass…done with that in one week. With that said, I’m taking a break to discuss a movie whose review is long overdue: Where Eagles Dare.

It’s a rare thing for me to watch a movie and just accept a completely absurd premise, events, storyline, characters, accents, etc. and just roll with it. It’s still another thing for me to do all that and still enjoy the movie. But this is the case with one of my favorite WWII films, Where Eagles Dare. If there is one thing this movie does well, it is kicking Nazi ass. If you like to see Nazis get blown up, stabbed, shot, impaled with pickaxes, thrown off cliffs, strangled or run over with a snowplow-equipped bus, this movie is for you. If you don’t, then I don’t want to be your friend.

So the basic plot is this: Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton lead a team of commandos in to go rescue an American general that was captured by the Germans. The Germans are going to torture him to figure out the plans for the Allied invasion of France. Honestly, don’t worry about anything else regarding the plot besides that because it’ll just make your head hurt. Just sit back and enjoy the Nazi killings.

This movie has also been ripped off by a lot of recent WWII video games. Virtually everything in Return to Castle Wolfenstein can be seen as an offshoot of this, and the recent shitty game Hour of Victory (I made a horrible mistake and rented that last weekend) goes so far as to even put an eagle in one of their concept art shots. So they're great game makers and subtle too.

Avoid at all costs.

I love this movie. It’s one of my favorites in the war genre, and personally, I think it is remarkably similar to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” due to its overbearing style, massive body counts, unrealistic portrayal of most everything that goes on in it, and of course, Clint. Go Netflix or buy it (I recently got my copy at Borders) now.

A synopsis

A decent trailer