Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Directed by Brian G. Hutton
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.
7 connections found
View:
7 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Where Eagles Dare to
Indeed, Gunn homages the narrative structure of numerous “infiltrate and escape” ‘60s blockbusters, with The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968) being the biggest touchstones.
Gunn takes inspiration for the film’s style from The Dirty Dozen and Kelly’s Heroes , Where Eagles Dare , and Platoon .
Cinematically, Gunn draws on all the gritty men-on-a-mission war movies of his childhood ( The Dirty Dozen , The Guns of Navarone , Where Eagles Dare ).
Fraser Taggart’s cinematography is impressive, seemingly paying homage to the kind of adventure movies they used to make in the sixties (like Where Eagles Dare and the early James Bonds), and the production design this time is remarkable.
Exactly the same honest claim was made by Richard Burton when explaining, if explanation was needed, why he was making Where Eagles Dare back in the 1960s.
And this is without discussing the director’s encyclopaedic movie knowledge invoking Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, To Be Or Not To Be, The Battle for Algiers, The Alamo, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, the original Italian war movie The Inglorious Bastards, and many more.
That's the first pillar of the script: a men-on-a-mission movie, like The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare or The Guns of Navarone, only with more shocking violence.
All Quiet on the Western Front ) the odd film out among countless movies that made viewers take delight in the wartime exploits of our fighting men ( The Dirty Dozen , The Guns of Navarone , Where Eagles Dare , and on and on and on).
Advertisement
Although many commentators will no doubt immediately compare the new WW II epic "Fury" to Quentin Tarantino's brilliant "Inglourious Basterds," largely because both films star Brad Pitt as a heavily-scarred, drawling Army man leading his men in a quest to kill as many Nazis as possible, it is actually closer in tone to a straightforward and un-ironic guys-on-a-mission tale along the lines of " The Dirty Dozen " or "Where Eagles Dare," with a heavy dollop of gruesome bloodletting depicting the true horrors of armed conflict that have been de rigueur for the war movie genre in the wake of " Saving Private Ryan ."
It’s more interested in those flashing arcade games, those goofy dance moves, those Icees, all that candy-colored runoff of teenage materialism — as if Kenneth Anger tried to remake The Way Way Back.
But its relatively uninvolving story, starchily directed by Tully and given little zing by an uneven cast, makes “Ping Pong Summer” an okay-not-great addition to a canon that has been elevated most recently by films like “ The Way, Way Back ” and “ The Spectacular Now .”
Warmly written and directed by Michael Tully, "Ping Pong Summer" is an affectionate coming-of-age comedy in the vein of 2009's " Adventureland " and 2013's " The Way Way Back ," one that feels for every moment like a film shot in the very decade in which it is set.
Conceived, co-scripted and directed by Jonathan Mostow, who first captured attention with his 1997 thriller "Breakdown," "U-571" aspires to the level of such popular ¹60s-era World War II "mission" films as "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Dirty Dozen."