Review Detail
9.8 8 10
Overall rating
10.0
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
10.0
Enjoyment
10.0
I've always loved these WWII action/adventure movies from the 60s. They may have little in common with how an actual war develops, but it's so incredibly fun to see our heroes outsmart the Nazis and then gun them down left and right! "Where Eagles Dare" may not be as brilliant as, say, "The Dirty Dozen", but it's always been a tremendously enjoyable ride, if indeed a slightly overlong one. I could live with the running time, but I admit the movie lost me a bit when the characters start firing rounds and rounds without ever reloading, to a point where it feels like watching someone play a videogame with the "god mode" cheat activated.
Well, this cut completely fixes that. Not only does it lose half an hour of footage without anything feeling missing and without giving up the narrative style of the 60s, but it also makes the action considerably more believable and much less over the top. The "narm" factor of the infinite ammo is gone; we still don't see much reloading, but the way it all develops flows the way it should. This is exactly the way this film should have played from day one. Pretty much perfection.
A special mention must go to the tweaked credits: Robulon is a master of those. They look completely undistinguishable from actual optically printed credits from the era (something highly difficult to achieve - I can only hope to ever get half as good at it as he is), and in this case overcoming the extreme difficulty of having had to erase the original title from over a moving background. In an era in which so many old film restorations are done in an obviously phony way (looking at you, Disney, and your visual cheapening of your animated library), they should look at this to see how it is properly done.
Another brilliant edit from Robulon, one of our finest new-ish editors whose work, sadly, doesn't seem to be getting half the attention it deserves. Very highly recommended!
Well, this cut completely fixes that. Not only does it lose half an hour of footage without anything feeling missing and without giving up the narrative style of the 60s, but it also makes the action considerably more believable and much less over the top. The "narm" factor of the infinite ammo is gone; we still don't see much reloading, but the way it all develops flows the way it should. This is exactly the way this film should have played from day one. Pretty much perfection.
A special mention must go to the tweaked credits: Robulon is a master of those. They look completely undistinguishable from actual optically printed credits from the era (something highly difficult to achieve - I can only hope to ever get half as good at it as he is), and in this case overcoming the extreme difficulty of having had to erase the original title from over a moving background. In an era in which so many old film restorations are done in an obviously phony way (looking at you, Disney, and your visual cheapening of your animated library), they should look at this to see how it is properly done.
Another brilliant edit from Robulon, one of our finest new-ish editors whose work, sadly, doesn't seem to be getting half the attention it deserves. Very highly recommended!
D