Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Donald Sutherland — it’s hard to imagine a movie starring these three being anything less than excellent. In 1976, under the direction of John Sturges with a screenplay adaptation by Tom Mankiewicz, the popular Jack Higgins novel “The Eagle Has Landed” was brought to the big screen. In it, Robert Duvall plays an accomplished and obedient Nazi officer who is tasked with a seemingly impossible mission: capture Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The hope is that Churchill’s capture will turn the tide of the war, which looks bleak for the Reich. As Colonel Radl, Duvall studies the intel and begins to craft a plan. It would have a small commando team inserted into a Norfolk area village, where it is believed Churchill will be on vacation.
Meanwhile, Michael Caine’s character, the decorated Colonel Steiner, gets himself and his parachute squad into trouble when he attempts to aid a helpless Jewish girl escape the clutches of his fellow Nazis. He and his skilled team are court martialed and sent to a penal colony, quietly serving out their time. Radl, with the full blessing of Hitler, offers Steiner and his men vindication if he takes on this foolhardy suicide mission to capture Churchill. Steiner and his men agree, and together with Sutherland’s character, Devlin, the plan is put into motion. Devlin, a fierce IRA member who wants only for Britain to fail, agrees to get to the small village first to meet up with a local contact and help get things prepared for Steiner’s arrival.
Things go according to plan until one fateful accident that sends the entire operation in another direction. Nearly all of the action of the film is spared for segments in the last half hour, but for the most part, this is an engaging war drama. In many ways, it’s a tragedy, if you’re looking at this film through the eyes of the Nazis. It’s true that their purpose and their stance in the war is historically disagreeable, but I thought Mankiewicz, Sturgess, and Caine did a great job of making the viewer almost root for Caine’s success. Plus, let’s face it — how often do you see Michael Caine as the “bad guy?” Even here is the most even keel and borderline good-bad guy there is. Anyway, I thought his role and that of Duvall’s were very well done. The scenes with Donald Pleasence as the intimidating Himmler were also excellent. I also thought Donald Sutherland did a good job, but, I really didn’t think his love interest subplot with Jenny Agutter (co-star in Logan’s Run by the way) was at all necessary. For me, that love interest subplot only extended and complicated the film unnecessarily, and it didn’t make me any more interested in Sutherland’s character. There are some comedic elements thrown in too, mostly from Larry Hagman’s character, Colonel Pitts. While worth a smirk or maybe a chuckle or two, his character was despicable and also unnecessary.
The Eagle Has Landed has “more going on” than most war movies, in terms of characters, subplots, and themes (war, suspense, love, etc). I’m not sure that this combination of elements made the movie better, though. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to appreciate about this movie, from the historically accurate costumes to the intriguing story to the great acting — but having seen the movie for the first time a couple of nights ago, I’m still trying to place it in my all time war movie list. In a way it reminded me of another Caine WWII movie called Play Dirty. Both films had some lulls, but were mostly entertaining, yet their tragic endings left a sort of disappointment in me.
The Collector’s Edition Blu-ray from Shout! includes the film on both Blu-ray (1080p, 2:35:1, DTS-HD MA) and DVD (2:35:1, Dolby Digital), nicely combined in a single Blu-ray case. The menu font is pretty small, but it’s clean and perfectly functional. I was pleased to see English subtitle support as Shout! releases rarely have subtitles, which I appreciate. I actually watched this movie with subtitles in addition to audio, and the subtitles are only mostly accurate — it was interesting to see a few lines of dialogue completely omitted in the subs. Much more importantly, the presentation quality was very good to great. Image quality was mostly crisp and vibrant, with very few technical issues. I did witness several scenes when Sutherland’s character, Devlin, arrives in Mapledurham that had an odd “motion” to the background. It was peculiar, and faint enough to where I was almost unsure if I was actually seeing that slight bit of ‘slide’ to the background image. Other than that, I thought the image quality was very good.
As for extra features, there is over an hour of material here, all of it dated, including lots of vintage 1976 footage. All features are in SD:
-The Eagle Has Landed Revisited: Invading Mapledurham (15m6s) – The final battle takes place in this small town. This is a nice feature that includes several cast and crew members, as well as a citizen of Mapledurham, reminiscing about filming here. Modern day images are compared with ones taken in 1976, too.
-Tom Mankiewicz: Looking Back (10m28s) – A 2007 interview with the late writer/producer/director. He discusses the challenge and opportunities presented in adapting John Higgins’ popular novel to the screen. He talks about the importance of getting the viewer to invest in the protagonist, who in this case is a sort of good-bad guy.
-ATV Today On Location (9m14s) – A neat, 1976 vintage narrated making of / behind the scenes feature with interviews of Caine, Hagman, and Sturgess on set.
-Film Night Location Report (5m16s) – More interviews from on set.
-On Location In Norfolk (3m27s) – Some production footage and a interview with Sturgess on location.
-On Set Interviews (25m53s) – Caine, Sutherland, and Sturgess all providing good interviews about the film and other topics.
-Trailer (3m)
And with that, let’s get to the summary…