Director: John Sturges
Starring: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson
Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.
I’ve been wanting to see ‘The Great Escape’ for a while, and now that I’ve seen it, I’m a bit disappointed. I’ll tell you why in the closing paragraphs, which will contain spoilers.
A Group of Allied airmen are taken to a new prisoner camp, and from the moment they arrive, they make plans to escape. Steve McQueen stars as Hilts, who is known to be an escape artist. However, he fails several times which sees him being sent to ‘the cooler’.
Bartlett (Richard Attenborough) then comes forward with a daring escape plan. They are to dig tunnels to the nearby forest, and about 250 men will be able to escape at once. The film follows the realization of this plan. This is a very long film and most of the film revolves in the execution of this plan.
And this is where I’m going to tell you why I’m disappointed in the film, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want spoilers, stop reading now. When an escape plan is set into motion, the excitement comes in the anticipation of seeing them succeed. However, in ‘The Great Escape’ they don’t! Only 76 of the men manage to escape, but most of them are killed, while the rest are captured again. Hardly a great escape, is it? Supposedly based on fact, the film is however mostly fictional for the sake of a wider appeal.
This highly acclaimed film is also notable for its motorcycle chase and – apparently – the motorcycle jump scene. Let me put this in perspective: the ‘jump’ scene literally lasts all but a second, and isn’t truly all that magnificent. Back then I suppose it was, but looking at how stunts have evolved over the years, the stunts in this film are nothing in comparison. Even the chase scene, which was intercut between other scenes, wasn’t all that exciting (by today’s standards). Unfortunately, this is the problem with many of the older films: they become so dated that they don’t compare well to new films – especially action films.
There’s no doubt in my mind this film must have been extraordinary back in 1963, but the film industry has come a long way over the last six decades!
‘The Great Escape’ earned $11.7 million on a budget of $3.8 million. It received several accolades including an Oscar nomination for Best Editing.
Would I watch it again? From this review it should be obvious: no.
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