I recently grabbed a good used copy of this film in a pawn shop for two bucks and I would have sworn that I had seen this 1976 production before now... but, as it turns out, I had not. My older brother made precisely the same comment. The movie is, of course, based upon Jack Higgins thriller-novel of the same name: The Eagle Has Landed (Liam Devlin)
I'm pretty sure that this movie never caught on for multiple reasons:
-- The premise of the film is just a little over the top, (a plan to kidnap Churchill during WWII.)
-- The script sort of makes the Nazi special forces team look like good and honorable guys, (details on this later.)
-- The producers/writers/director must have argued about the genre of the film... it's part serious, part tongue-in-cheek.
But I can live with these minor issues, especially since the positive aspects of this movie far outweigh its apparent weaknesses. Here's the story in a nutshell:
By 1943, Hitler is getting desperate as the war drags on so he seizes upon a desperate measure: sending a team into England to kidnap Winston Churchill, the hope being that the mission's success might initiate a negotiated peace. This elite special force, (which has to be sprung en masse from a suspended death sentence stemming from a German court martial proceeding), poses as a Polish Paratrooper unit and they have sympathizers already established in the small community, where Churchill is slated to visit, to help them pull it off. The members of this diminutive Nazi force are so ethical that they insist on wearing their German uniforms under the Polish ones (!?!) The group doesn't anticipate the small American force which is billeted nearby. And the cat is really out of the bag when one of the German soldiers forfeits his life while saving the life of a little English girl and his real uniform is thus inadvertently revealed to the locals. Lots of great action.
Does all this sound vaguely familiar? Yes, what we have here is a quirky sort of The Dirty Dozen in reverse. (I love that film too!)
The movie is packed with terrific stars and here are the main bad guys (including a talented IRA man): Donald Sutherland, Michael Caine, Donald Pleasance, Robert Duvall, and Anthony Quayle. The Americans include Treat Williams and Larry Hagman. Yes, I said Larry Hagman -- he's the tongue-in-cheek guy who gives rise to the film's comedy relief. The sensual Jenny Agutter plays an English gal with mixed loyalties.
So the casting is a bit jumbled in regard to the assigned roles. It's hard for us to think of Sutherland and Caine as evil Nazis and, in fact, they are presented as "virtuous" Nazis. Duvall makes a terrible Nazi but his performance is still excellent. Conversely, Donald Pleasance presents us with a poster-quality Himmler. Larry Hagman is ideal in his role as an inept, inexperienced American Colonel and Treat Williams pulls off the all-American soldier boy role faultlessly. But the viewer can hardly help himself from, at times, secretly cheering on the Germans in their near-impossible quest.
From a technical aspect, this 134-minute film is first-class. The locations are stunning, the sets are perfect, and the cinematography (shot in Panavision) is second to none. Lalo Schifrin composed the very appropriate filmscore and it lends much to the video aspects. The writing wasn't brilliant but, in the end, that's much why I liked it. There are no surprises and the viewer can pretty much anticipate what's going to happen next. All this makes for a superb rainy Saturday afternoon couch potato film. The aspect ratio is letterbox (widescreen) which I also prefer.
I must say that throughout the film, things just sort of bump along and, in the aggregate story, it never seems to jell -- so this one is very episodic. But again, I liked this offbeat approach. I was to a great extent reminded of a superb 1950s John Wayne war flick where The Duke plays a German officer: The Sea Chase. Again, the incongruity of it all launched that film for me.
I know it sounds just a tad peculiar but if you savor these later-period (1950s and '60s) war flicks, and you can endorse the offbeat, then this one will probably work for you.
Highly recommended for fans of the genre.
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"The Eagle Has Landed... To the Moon Nazi"
"I love this clunky film and here's why... (details)"