Where Eagles Dare

As with Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare pulls itself together best in its third act

It gets better, yields deeper layers of meaning, every time I see it.

Alistair MacLean wrote an original screenplay that was treated with respect for the writer's unusual abilities as a master of actionful suspense. The resulting film is highly entertaining, thrilling and rarely lets down for a moment.

It may be devoid of significance of any sort, but it is nevertheless passably entertaining, and certainly better viewing than most MacLean adaptations.

It is so long (almost three hours) that it may finally bore the very action trade for which it was intended; yet it's just at that point of surface boredom that the movie aficionado will probably become entranced.

...sets the right, jaunty tone for a never-to-be-bettered, big-star WWII victory lap…

Alas, the film's main fault is that it endures too long... There is an intermission in the showing I caught, but war epics preferably should be limited to 2 hours. The puzzle should be solved in that time span, wouldn't you say?

The new Richard Burton-Clint Eastwood movie, Where Eagles Dare, manages to bore you to death and insult your intelligence at the same time.

A classic of its time, this riveting WWII drama is rife with great action sequences (the cable car!) and shock twists pulled out of thin air. Three escapist hours very well spent.