My review was written in January 1988 after watching the movie on MGM/UA video cassette.
Cirio H. Santiago's "Eye of the Eagle" is a low-octane (and low interest) war picture from the prolific Filipino helmer, who has been in Roger Corman's stable off and on for the past 15 years. His 1972 effort "Savage" was a lot more fun in the same vein.
Newie, shot in 1986, relies upon a tasteless plot device, postulating that various renegade G. I.s in Vietnam, listed as POWs and MIAs, actually are making up a "lost command" unit carrying out massacres and unauthorized missions. Cec Verrell portrays a pretty newshen on the track of this expose story, joined reluctantly by Sergeant Stratton (beefy Brett Clark) after latter conducts various minor league missions of his own.
Upshot is that the renegades are led by Sergeant Rattner (Ed Crick), who killed Stratton's brother years before. Climax is the expected one-on-one battle between the two soldiers.
Pic consists mainly of mindless machine gun battles, in which shooting and explosions are boring and out of context. Use of Filipino actors as the Vietnamese is utterly unconvincing, especially when the heinous North Vietnamese colonel is played by Vic Diaz, mainstay of dozens of Filipino action pics of the '60s and '70s. Lead player Clark is stiff and given to monotone line readings, while Verrell, a Santiago discovery who had a distinctive, butch persona in the director's previous film "Silk", is here just another Kate Capshaw clone.
