Wonderful character development!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

John Wayne in one of his early credited roles - Craig McCoy, a fancy flier. Dorothy Gulliver is "Jean", and her family is losing the circus if they don't come up with some cash fast. Wayne is the "Ace" who is determined to stop the "bad guys" from using and producing "the invention" stolen from the original "Eagle". Lots of unknowns here. It also seems to be a film made from a twelve episode series. The picture and sound quality are pretty rough. Much use of trick photography effects, to make it look like the plane was lighting the circus tents on fire, and even during the sky-writing itself. Skip this one. Stapled together from a serial series. Written and directed by Ford Beebe. Meh..... goes for 3 hours.

It's unfair to review a 1930s serial by today's entertainment standards; expectations were different and the formula is an alien one. That caveat out of the way, man, does "The Shadow Of The Eagle" stink.Craig McCoy (John Wayne) is a stunt pilot at a struggling carnival who gets $100 for a skywriting job just when carnival owner Nathan Gregory (Edward Hearn) finds himself $97 short of paying off a debt collector. McCoy is happy to keep his boss in business, but both soon find themselves under suspicion when McCoy's skywriting turns out to be a threat to a group of factory owners who used Gregory's stolen invention to build a fortune."You stand in the shadow of the Eagle," a voice in the darkness tells the owners shortly before one of them turns up dead.Seeing Wayne star in a serial gives you a chance to see the future star work his on-screen charisma in its fledgling form. Unfortunately there's not much to see here; not from Wayne, who does little more than work his smile between stunts; not from the film, which hits you with a succession of half-baked cliffhangers.I know I can't really complain about logic gaps, character inconsistencies, and tone shifts in a film designed to entertain eight-year-olds in an era long before Nintendo or "Game Of Thrones." But if the film is going to throw so much nonsense up in the air, the least it could do is make it move. "Shadow Of The Eagle" features long sections of wooden dialogue and endless cycles of captures and recaptures.A lot of the film is spent with various characters watching the Eagle's skywriting, as slow as skywriting tends to be."Why...it's a question mark!""Why...it means that Clark's been wiped out, and they're asking who's next!"Adding to the underbaked effect is the way director Ford Beebe cheats the cliffhangers between chapter. One chapter ends with a car blowing up, only to begin the next chapter by having it explained as a tire blowout.Wayne has a nice moment early on when he is confronted by an aggressive questioner ("I'll do the questioning..." "Well, you'll do your own answering, too.") There's also that stunt classicsoncall mentioned in another review, the plane buzzing McCoy as he runs across a field like Cary Grant. But such moments are thin on the ground and get thinner as the serial moves along and various supporting characters pop up and drop off without explanation."Shadow Of The Eagle" bears the marks of a project being made up as it went along by a no-budget studio. Unfortunately, while inspiration is free, talent is not. The result of working around that reality is terribly obvious with more than three hours to fill.

While this is not John Wayne's finest movie, or even his finest serial, for fans of the cliffhanger it delivers plenty of action and pretty good acting.The main point of this review is to caution you about differences in the two DVD releases, both essentially from the same starting print. Decisions taken by the two different DVD production companies make all the difference in whether you enjoy this film or feel cheated. The two companies are Marengo Films and Platinum Disc. I first purchased the Marengo print and was so wholly unsatisfied with the editing and production that I went looking for another. I finally found it from a company named Platinum Discs.The Marengo release chops 5 seconds off the end of the film, leaving out completely John Wayne's closing scene. Also, the text that Marengo substituted for the studio's "The End" text is huge, blocky and computer generated. In short, Marengo has butchered the film for the sake of reducing the total number of VOBs needed to hold the DVD film image.The Platinum Disc release is the entire original film, not a single frame, more or less. My only disappointment with this version is they appear to have made no effort to clean up dust and scratches. The irony is that the Marengo print does have slightly more detail and better scratch and dust cleanup, however not enough, IMHO, to compensate for altering the original edit.Review written May 22, 2011 based on latest available releases from Marengo and Platinum.

Well what d'ya know? Just stumbled across this little caper which brings back happy memories of a childhood long long departed. The year was 1950 and I recall SHADOW OF THE EAGLE, the first time I ever clapped eyes on a very young up and coming John Wayne. (He had fully upped and comed by 1950!) Interestingly, this action-fest was considered somewhat of a "relic" even then!Shown as a weekly 20 minute serial at our local Saturday Morning Flicks...itself, the major regular event in our home town, I recall Wayne as square-jawed pilot Craig McCoy out to discover the truth behind the disappearance of a fairground owner whose livelihood had been threatened by the nefarious "Eagle." Each episode left a young boy barely able to wait for the following Saturday to catch Craig's latest revelations and discoveries in the dastardly plot. Actually, I can't ever recall the concluding episode.....maybe I had a sleepover the previous night? Maybe I'd finally cracked a date in her pedal-car with the five year old blonde tease next door, in which case poor old Duke was never a chance!