That's A Serious Thespian Mismatch

It really isn't fair. I mean, the Germans get Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Michael Caine, and even Donald Pleasance (as Himmler), and the Americans get Larry Hagman and Treat Williams? Poor Winston Churchill is doomed. Or not.

Certainly the Germans have the star power in The Eagle Has Landed, not that it ultimately did them much good. And I guess they aren't all Germans, since Sutherland plays Liam Devlin, an Irishman who works with the Nazis because he really hates the British. Which makes a lot of sense. I'm sure if the Nazis succeeded in conquering the world they would have been the best pals the Irish ever had. That Jack Higgins (who wrote the book the movie is based on) decided to make Devlin the star of several of his subsequent books does not make me want to read any of those books.

Anyway, Hitler had been very impressed by a commando raid that spirited Mussolini away, and wanted a similar one to capture Churchill. Colonel Radl (Duvall) took the order to do a report on the feasibility a little too seriously, Steiner (Michael Caine) and his men figured it was better to go on this mission than be stuck piloting one-man subs that were gradually whittling them down, and here we are.

Maybe the book fleshes it out, but Larry Hagman's character seemed pointless. He's a gung-ho colonel who really wants some action before he's transferred back home. So when he gets word there's a German commando unit posing as Poles in a British village not far from Churchill's estate, he rushes out there with pitifully few men, and gets his group mostly slaughtered. But in terms of the story, it doesn't accomplish much. Steiner's unit doesn't gain some advantage from it. They're stuck waiting for Churchill to come through, which isn't going to happen. It doesn't present them with an opportunity to flee, either. So I guess Hagman's character served the same role as Deputy Chief Robinson in Die Hard: To be wrong all the time.

I guess it could establish how professional the commandos are compared to these green Americans, but the Americans are so poorly led it's hard to conclude much about their ability. And even so they managed to destroy the Germans escape truck with a bazooka. Even a fledgling can get in a peck or two.