There's a certain sort of militaristic, maladjusted creep -- I've met a few in my time -- who's fascinated by Nazis to the point of idolatry. (Often, too, he's an expert on German regalia, uniforms, weaponry, etc.) Guys like this must love "The Eagle Has Landed," because the Nazis in it are -- with a few exceptions -- paragons of courage and virtue. (The few exceptions are, as usual, the Gestapo and the SS. As in another popular sympathy-for-the-Nazis movie, "Das Boot," these branches make convenient villains, serving as a contrast to the clean-cut good-guy Germans who just happen to be fighting for the Fuhrer because...well, they're patriots, that's all; they have absolutely nothing against Jews, and they despise those slimy fanatical Gestapo bastards -- honest!) The Michael Caine character in "Eagle" actually incurs punishment for trying to save a Jewish woman's life (how heroic can you get?); later, rather than shoot an unwary American sentry, he simply knocks the man unconscious. One of Caine's men dies rescuing a little English girl from drowning. The Germans take English villagers hostage but honorably let them all go unharmed, then die together fighting for the Fatherland rather than surrender.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Americans are headed up by Larry Hagman, playing a cartoonish officer straight out of the Three Stooges. When he learns that Nazis have landed in England to kidnap Churchill and are holding hostages in a nearby church, he -- get this! -- refuses to inform central command; you see, he wants the glory all to himself. He and most of his men end up dead, sometimes in Keystone Kops style. (One jeep goes hurtling off a road into a river; Hagman himself puts on a surprised, comic, almost cross-eyed face when he gets shot and tumbles down a flight of stairs.)<br /><br />England herself fares little better. One muscular villager is a hostile lout whom Donald Sutherland, as an England-hating IRA agent, effortlessly beats to a pulp, and does so without losing his impish Irish grin. (In real life, said lout would have kicked the reedy Sutherland all over the set.) Sutherland trades a few romantic quips with a village lass played by Jenny Agutter; they have maybe five or six minutes of conversation (fully clothed, which is rare for Agutter), whereupon the lass falls so deeply in love with the IRA man that she shoots the English lout dead and proceeds to betray her fellow villagers -- indeed, her entire country. I suspect that some scenes developing the relationship may have been cut; still, shame on Agutter, Caine, and every other Briton involved in this production. If Britain were as feckless as this, its citizens would now be speaking German (or Gaelic).<br /><br />A few commentators have mentioned this movie's similarity to a little-known English film called "Went the Day Well?" It was made during the war, on a much tinier budget, in black and white, without any international stars (unless Leslie Banks qualifies as one), but its characters are better drawn, and it's far more suspenseful and about a thousand times more charming.