Loved the original Alistair McClean with Richard Burton book & then the film, so this was an interesting read

NetGalley/Publisher review:

I'm afraid I was so bored. I love the film, I'm almost word perfect from watching it so many times so I was really looking forward to reading this but. I think my sense of humour is completely different to the author's and I simply couldn't be bothered to finish it.

Every so often i do like to try something totally different from the usual genres that i enjoy reading. Sometimes i find i am wanting to read more of a genre that i haven't thought about before and sometimes not. All i can say that this book wasn't for me. However, i do thank Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy and this is my honest review.

An excellent memoir on cult films and why we love them, filled with nostalgia and laughter. A wonderfull look at film geek culture.

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this book? I love satire, I love observation, I love "Where Eagles Dare", I'm that annoying person who notices the subtle continuity errors or gives the factual correction whilst a film is playing. One of those things clearly didn't allow me to see the humour in this work.

I found the whole stilted, a monologue of observations picked out from multiple viewings of the film. It read as a thesis on a topic that the author was at pains to show he knew well, so well in fact, that he lost himself in his own linguistic skills, producing page-long sentences which required re-reads to make sure you were applying the right clause.

I like Dyer - this book was a miss, however, which I struggled to complete.

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC

This is almost a plotting of the plot of the film "Where Eagles Dare". I see it as a "what is my motivation" in this film / how should i play it? There are moments where i really did catch the satire that is loaded throughout the book. It was a short, witty read and I enjoyed it although I can see the style and content being a bit "Marmite" for the reading public who will love and hate it in equal numbers. I enjoyed it

Entertaining, but I kinda hoped for more than just the superficial personal commentary - maybe some more in depth factual contract about locations etc

The author has some real issues with females of this film, he’s just not funny. I love this film and the book by Alistair McLean. This book is not good. It’s tedious, unfunny and dull. I just hope it hasn’t ruined the film for people as it’s very good.

This book was amusing in places, but I have to admit I wasn't engrossed. However, not having see the film in question I'm probably not the target audience.

Thank you to NegGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this.

A Wonderful, Reverent and Comic Review of the Classic Film “Where Eagles Dare”:
This is a delightful trip down memory lane for those of us who regard “Where Eagles Dare” as one of the best adventure films ever made.
Dyer’s affection for the film is obvious from the start as he provides an in-depth commentary on "Where Eagles Dare": scene by scene, actor by actor, and dissects the plot. Nothing escapes his witty pen as he reverentially analyses this endearing film. Most, if not all, of the intended readership of this book, will have seen the film. Probably many times over. And Dyer relies on the reader’s familiarity with the film throughout. Dyer’s review focuses on the sublime and the ridiculous which when combined with inspired directorship made this film the classic it became. Messrs Burton and Eastwood’s rivalry in their rôles as they vie for acclaim as the leading actor don’t escape Dyer’s wit. Dyer takes the film apart in a way only a film critic of his calibre can.
The book makes for an engrossing read and will no doubt entice many readers into watching that classic Alpine WWII movie yet again. Highly readable and short, the book serves as a fitting tribute as the film approaches its 50th Anniversary. Incredible to think that it’s now that old. Mind you, as Dyer points out, some of the more ridiculous scenes are a homily to the classic adventure films made in the 1960’s: a golden age. If you enjoyed “Where Eagles Dare” then you will definitely enjoy Geoff Dyer’s light-hearted book.

This is just a great book. Totally unexpected. A complete analysis and ode to the 1969 movie Where Eagles Dare, at the time thought of as a good, not great adventure/WWll movie, with Richard Burton and the incredibly sexy Mary Urem and based on the novel of the same name by Alistair Maclean. Dyer picks up art the movie, in a good way, with an obsessiveness and eye for detail that is amazing. An ode to youth, and movies, it’s just great.

I’m sorry to say I got bored with this book. It is an in-depth look at the main actors and scenes in Where Eagles dare, I loved the film, but I don’t want to read s9meone else’s take on facial eexpressions or americanisms that happen throughout the film. If you’re a film buff, you will probably enjoy the book, I didn’t.

I loved Zona by Geoff Dyer and hoped this might have the same gravitas but alas no. I wanted more childhood references than just Action Man in a ski suit but somehow they just didn’t arrive. Perhaps Where Eagles Dare just didn’t merit a book, an essay would have done. Why a poor review - because I wanted so much more. Having said that I will be watching the film again with renewed energy. Next one please Mr Dyer!

If you love 'Where Eagles Dare', this in-depth study of the film, with many amusing observations will appeal.

For other readers who are not devotees of the film, you will learn a lot about it from the author's observations, but it's like an 'in' joke you have to be there to find it funny.

The quality of the writing is evident, but I lost interest at times with the content, and I have seen the film more than once.

Conclusions, am I glad I read this book? Yes. Would I have read it if I'd realised how detailed the content is? No.

I received a copy of this book from Penguin Books UK via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I loved Broadsword Calling Danny Boy. It’s funny, affectionate but knowing and rather insightful in places.

Fairly obviously, this is written for people who know the film Where Eagles Dare and preferably who love it – a group which includes most of us who were teenage boys when it came out in late 1968. I still remember seeing it for the first time at the cinema, and, for example, the roar of laughter when Richard Burton announces that he has uncovered a plot to assassinate the Führer. Geoff Dyer approaches the film in the same way – loving its absurdities while pointing them out and relishing the gleeful excitement, dated attitudes and haircuts and so much else. He made me laugh regularly, while also providing some genuinely interesting and illuminating background. He perhaps dwells a little too much on Burton’s drinking and fading-star status, but otherwise I think he gets the tone just right.

Not all reviewers agree with me; several don’t share Dyer’s sense of humour, for example, but I found it a delight, which also has the immense merit of being under 130 pages long and not over-stretching itself. Personally, I can recommend this very warmly.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

I saw the film of Where Eagles Dare fifty years ago and all I could remember was the opening scene with the dramatic music. I can't say it all came flooding back as I read Geoff Dyer's commentary upon the movie. He talks us through the movie, scene by scene, with a blokey cameraderie. Just that - he tells us what happens, together with his asides, e.g. the early scene where the team are looking for their missing colleague prompts a footnote about Dyer's Action Man's ski patrol costume.

I'm not sure what the point of the book is, other than for Dyer to demonstrate that
- he's well read, with quotes from Rilke and Clive James
- one of the boys by slinging some four-letter words into his descriptions;
- had a childhood, by mentioning the relative complexity of some Airfix models and telling us about his Action Man's wardrobe
- he can be sarcastic.

Whilst his suggestions that Richard Burton was only in for the money; and that Clint Eastwwod's range of facial expressions is not vast, may be correct, they don't add to my store of knowledge.

Not a book I shall read again, nor an author I shall seek out.

#BroadswordCallingDannyBoy #NetGalley

I've heard about how amusing Geoff Dyer is from his travelogues (Geoff in Venice) but I didn't see any of that supposed humour in this book. A small book about his love of an old war movie - really? I didn't get anything out of this besides Dyer's enthusiasm for all things related to this movie. Very poor and unappealing - it's put me off trying anything else by this author.

This was the first film that I saw that was better than the book! The author comments on the film of "Where eagles dare" practically scene by scene. Very funny analysing Richard Burton's performance, also Clint Eastwood's role as well as commenting on various members of the cast.
Pokes fun in a lighthearted but informative way. Although he points out errors in the film, such as the aeroplane that takes seven men and one woman into enemy territory was not built until after the war! Plenty of facts and anecdotes to keep you amused, but basically he loves the film and it comes over loud and clear, although he admits when he catches it on television, it's usually part way through and at one particular part. If you haven't seen the film try your best to rectify this, and then read the book and enjoy the observations. Highly recommended, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

‘Broadsword calling Danny boy’ is a phrase imprinted on anyone who knows the film where Eagles Dare and I defy anyone catching those words not to do so without hearing Richard Burton’s distinctive resonant tones announcing it.

The intro sets the scene (literally) for the kind of read you are in for:

“Do the mountains and the blue Bavarian twilight cause the drum march to rattle into existence – is the music an emanation of the mountains? – or are the peaks and valleys hauled into view by the march of drums? Are these Heideggerian questions, or is it just that the Teutonic opening credits – as red as the background of a Nazi flag – could not be any redder against the mountainous blue of snow-clad mountains and the deep blue sky passing for night?”

This description of scenic majesty is followed with the more intimate exposition of the inside of the Junkers Ju-52 flying covertly into Nazi Germany. We are introduced to the inscrutable expression Clint Eastwood and the anxious one of Burton because according to Dyer he has money worries of the kind that people who aren’t weighted down by vast quantities of cash cannot begin to understand.”

It is these interjections, along with Dyer employing the type of zoom in/zoom out change of focus you normally associate with action films and their cousin the novel, which makes you realise this is not a cheap attempt to cash in on what is considered by many to be one of the greatest war films of all time. Instead it is something which lovingly takes a scene by scene approach, dissecting all its foibles and dwelling on why it is Burton should wish to linger in woodsheds with comely young female agents in the precursor to launching an impossible mission with an equally improbable amount of portable munitions. Like the ‘never empty sack’ in fairy tales.

It’s the kind of book you don’t read in public on account of the outburst of chuckles or sudden choking fits after swallowing food while laughing. When it strays into the arena of the pretentious it does so with a hilarious knowing.

Dyer reveals a broad reading palette, along with the ability worthy of the most adept quilter to blend a patchwork of references with the outrageous Alistair Maclean plot into something to warm a reader by a roaring great fire. So grab your milk and cookies (or a large glass of expensive spirit) to sustain you and curl up with a read which is a sit down and consume in one go. Then switch on the TV and glory in every highlighted detail.

Oh dear. Slapped wrists to all the blurb-writers who mention this as being funny; it's patently not. Instead it's a sugar rush of observations noted down while a film was playing in the background – but with this level of frenetic detail it must have taken multiple viewings, either that or the pause button was pressed every ten seconds. The panoply of detail and forensic "analysis" comes at you in page-long sentences, with far too many clauses, and far too little editing, meaning I tired of the 'style' really quickly. A shame, as I wanted something esoteric along the lines of the 33-and-a-third books about music records – just not this esoteric.