Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

bkoganbing Because he's upset the hard line Nazis of the S.S., paratroop commander Michael Caine and his men are sent on a suicide mission, to go to Great Britain and bring about the capture or death of Winston Churchill. The Nazis have intelligence that the Prime Minister will be on the coast inspecting fortifications and will be spending one night at a particular coastal village.The mission is to go in as Free Polish soldiers and take up residence in said coastal village. But ironically are given away by a random act of kindness by one of the Germans. After that Caine and his men are on their own.Ironically it's in English history that one finds a parallel for the predicament Caine is in. Sir Walter Raleigh under a death sentence, but the warrant unexecuted spent some 15 years in the Tower Of London until James I sent him on a mission to South America to find gold in the Orinoco River country of what is now Venezuela. No gold and Raleigh came back to face the ax. This was John Sturges's last action/adventure film and he put together a fine ensemble cast. English actors Anthony Quayle and Donald Pleasence play Admiral Carnaris and S.S. head Heinrich Himmler. John Standing is the village vicar, Treat Williams is American army captain, Jean Marsh is an enemy spy in the village and Judy Geeson is Standing's sister and a WREN. Standing out however in the cast is Donald Sutherland as a former IRA man who has gone over to the Nazis and he also is an enemy agent who gets a chance to fall in love with local Jenny Agutter. And Larry Hagman is a thick as a brick army colonel who blunders into the situation and bungles badly. the Gomer Pyle of colonels.Of course we know how this ends because history tells us Churchill was not assassinated. Or do you? You might be in for a surprise.

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.

AaronCapenBanner Based on Jack Higgen's novel, film tells the story of a secret German plan to kidnap Winston Churchill as a bargaining chip against Great Britain! Michael Caine leads the mission, where they are disguised as Polish soldiers on maneuvers, and helped by an IRA supporter(played by Donald Sutherland) who will do anything in his war against the British. Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Jenny Agutter, and Jean Marsh round out the fine cast.Despite the fanciful premise, this is an old-fashioned and very entertaining adventure, well directed by John Sturges, and features a good script as well, leading to the surprise climax.

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?