Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: John Sturges
Year: 1963
Rating: 
RECOMMENDED
At almost three hours, The Great Escape may drag a little for modern audiences, but it is still an entertaining and relatively lighthearted adventure story.
During World World II, Allied officers who were prisoners of war were obligated to try to escape from the Nazi prison camps in which they were being held in order to pull away German soldiers who would otherwise be at the front, thus hampering the Nazi war effort.
Some POWs were more zealous about this obligation than others.
The Germans decided to place the most successful escape artists into a special camp, putting all of their “rotten eggs in one basket” so to speak. The camp guards were specially trained, there were two walls of barbed wire instead of one, and the trees were cut down for three hundred feet outside the perimeter of the camp.
As you might guess, the prisoners end up pulling off a daring escape. How they do it under the noses of their captors, and the personalities of the men involved, is what makes The Great Escape fun. (That, and the fact that The Great Escape is based on a true story.)
Since The Great Escape features a large ensemble cast, and there isn’t much room in the script to flesh out the characters, much of the burden of making the various roles memorable falls on the actors. Fortunately, The Great Escape has quite a charismatic cast, including Steve McQueen, Donald Pleasance, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, James Coburn, and David McCallum.
Steve McQueen stands out as a cocky American who spends a lot of time in “the box” and has a thing for motorcycles.
Especially considering that The Great Escape was made in the early 60s, director John Sturges keeps the proceedings moving along at a decent clip.
Worth a rental, at the very least, especially if you’re trying to find something for the whole family that won’t put you to sleep.
If you found this post helpful, share it by clicking on one of these icons!
Related posts:
- Hard Times - Reality With A Hollywood Chaser
- A Man Called Sledge - The Love Of Money Is The Root of All Evil, blah, blah, blah
- My Name Is Bill W - The Blind Leading The Blind
- The Getaway - A Love Story From Sam Peckinpah
- The Mechanic - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Killer
- The Evil That Men Do - Assassination For Dummies
- The Stone Killer - Who Knew Hired Killers Could Be So Dull?
- Breakout - A Pleasant Surprise
- Chato’s Land - An Ugly Western
- Mr. Majestyk - King Of The Melon Farmers
