From the title, I got the impression that this story would concern air force pilots. Instead, there's only a little aviation in the beginning. It's just that the destination and main setting is an alpine fortress nicknamed the "Castle of Eagles" (which had been a working title) for its low accessibility. Regardless, a war flick with the director of Kelly's Heroes and the writer of Guns of Navarone seemed promising.
In World War II, seven commandos in the UK are assigned to parachute a few miles from the castle, enter it in disguise as German soldiers, and fetch an American prisoner before he can spill too much. Because of the international nature of the incident, one of them, Lieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), is a U.S. Army Ranger. Only field leader Major John Smith (Richard Burton) knows all the details of the mission, including other agents already nearby. He also seems to have the best handle on just how dangerous it is....
I won't bother to list the other five commandos, not only because their actors aren't as famous but because they don't get as much attention. If you're looking for a movie in which a bunch of personalities play off each other, this isn't it. The party tends to get separated, sometimes by death or imprisonment, and only Smith and Schaffer give us a good idea of what they're like.
You will not hear a single word of German, barring a dubbed version. Presumably, whenever German characters speak or are spoken to, what we hear is a translation. What makes it particularly odd is that the commandos use the same accents regardless of language, yet nobody suspects them of fraud on that basis.
That's hardly the most bewildering thing about the movie. As hinted in my summary, the plot is not as simple as the briefing would have one believe. There's quite a bit of intrigue, repeatedly revising our understanding of who's who and what's what's. You probably shouldn't watch while half asleep.
Adding to a sense of surrealism is, well, a low amount of realism. This comes partly from a plethora of anachronisms and other inaccuracies. For example, prima donna Eastwood refused to lose his '60s haircut, even for a military role, and the party often doesn't bother with call signs on the radio. Any vet would balk, I imagine. There are also quite a few plot holes, which I hadn't noticed independently, but I did feel that not all questions had been answered.
It doesn't help that the special effects haven't aged well. The occasional blood looks off, and the use of chroma keying was too new. At least the shooting locations were in Austria and Bavaria, so some parts look authentic. And they had a now-celebrated stuntman, Alf Joint.
Then there are the typical lazy Hollywood action tropes. The heroes are much better shots than the villains. Grenades can take an extra long time to go off when it's convenient. Machine guns have improbably large clips.
Yeah, as you may have inferred, it's pretty violent for a '68 PG piece. In fact, the body count is a nice round 100, and Eastwood alone accounts for more than in any other role of his. Many kills are sneak attacks on men not at all prepared to face an enemy, and some involve blades. I'd feel sorry for the victims if they weren't, y'know, Nazis or collaborators with Nazis.
Regardless, WED is rather fun in a testosterone-laden way. Steven Spielberg loves it as a masculine semi-fantasy. I tentatively recommend it as well, tho I may want to check out the novelization, which sounds like an improvement.
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