Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
Prismark10
The Eagle has Landed is a hammy, rambling film which takes it all too seriously.In WWII a German unit led by Colonel Steiner (Michael Caine) and his men (previously imprisoned for disobeying orders) are parachuted into the Norfolk countryside, impersonate some Polish soldiers fighting for the British and plan to kidnap Winston Churchill who is due to visit the area.The Germans have sent in an IRA spy, Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland) to lay the groundwork. Everything is going well until a girl falls into a pond and one of the soldiers exposes his identity when he jumps in to rescue her. The nearby US army base is alerted that the village has been invaded and prepare for battle.John Sturges who made The Great Escape is rather po faced here. It lacks some underlying humour although Donald Sutherland and Larry Hagman try to provide it haphazardly. It is just that in 1976 when there was an IRA bombing campaign in full swing in the British mainland, very few Britons wanted quips from an IRA comedy sidekick.The pacing of the film is uneven and Caine tries to show a heroic side to the Nazis, he even tries to aid a Jewish woman escape.
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+
ken613uk
I thought this was quite a good film of the genre and a reasonable adaptation of the book by Jack Higgins which I have read more than once. I have recently watched a wartime film where the plot is as follows. A group of German paratroopers land in an English village in wartime. By accident their true identity is uncovered and they take a number of the villagers as hostages in the church. They are assisted in their task by a local villager who is, in fact, a fifth columnist. One of the villagers manages to escape and warn the allied forces. They attack the village and all the Germans lose their lives. I seem to have forgotten to give the name of the film. It was "Went The Day Well" which was made in 1942 ans was an adaptation of a short story by Graham Green and I can thoroughly recommend Does it ring a bell?
