I read Jack Higgin' novel before watching the movie and thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. The character of Liam Devlin, a tough Irish nationalist, (played beautifully here by a 'young' Donald Sutherland), was one Higgins re-used effectively in a few novels. In this story, a mission to kidnap Winston Churchill is hatched by the German High Command. The specific plot, a pipe dream of Himmler and Hitler, is concocted by Col. Radl, played skilfully by Robert Duvall, as always. He recruits a team of crack German commandos led by Michael Caine's Kurt Steiner. He and his team have fallen into disfavour, explaining why they accept such a wild, suicide venture. Nonetheless, Radl plants Devlin in Northern England in the fictional town of Studley Constable, where a disillusioned female Boer descendant has indicated the PM will arrive for dinner, cigars and brandy. Intelligence? Check. Team of Kidnappers disguised as Polish Nationals? Check. Means of escape I.e. a Brit- looking patrol boat? Check. What could go wrong? Superb performances by a great cast. Just one change from the book that may cheer you up: Steiner & his men are condemned because they interfere with an S.S. operation to load Jewish captives onto a train headed to a Death Camp. The Jewish girl they load onto a different train gets shot anyway-in the book, she gets away Scot-free! Ponder that as you see how this one finally turns out.

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.

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.

This film is unusual in that it is set during the Second World War but follows the actions of a German unit; Colonel Steiner and his men have been ordered to parachute into Norfolk and kidnap Winston Churchill during a visit to the county. To enable them to pass unnoticed by the locals the unit dress in the uniforms of Polish paratroopers. They aren't the only people working for their cause in the area; there is also an Irish spy, Liam Devlin, who arrived shortly before them and Joanna Grey, a South African woman who has lived in the area for some time. Everything is going according to plan until one of the village children falls into the mill pond; one of the Germans dives in and rescues her; he is drowned though and as he is caught up on the mill wheel the German uniform he was wearing under the Polish one is exposed. Now they must take the villagers hostage in the church until Churchill arrives. One of the villagers manages to escape and alerts the Americans stationed nearby... it looks as if it is all over for the Germans but Steiner manages to escape and makes a daring attempt to get to Churchill.It made a refreshing change to see a war film from the side of German soldiers; we are clearly meant to think of them as 'Good Germans' we even see Steiner attempt to save the life of a Jewish woman and Admiral Canaris, the man ordered by Hitler to prepare the plan went to the trouble of listing just about every major Nazi and suggesting they were mad! The acting was solid; I particularly liked Michael Caine's portrayal of Steiner and while some might have disliked Larry Hagman's portrayal of US Colonel Pitts I thought it was an entertaining portrayal of a man desperate to see action before his war was over. The only real criticism of the acting is of Donald Sutherland's Irish accent which seemed doubly bad when the character claimed to come from Belfast! The action was fairly solid and looked believable to my non-expert eye. The romantic subplot between Devlin and local girl Molly, played by Jenny Agutter, wasn't really necessary although it did serve to show he had a caring side.If you want to watch a slightly different war film I'd certainly recommend this; and if you enjoy this I'd recommend checking out the similarly themed 'Went the Day Well'; another film about Germans taking over an English village but this time made while the war was still very much on!