The Great Escape

The Great Escape_360P

good movie

source: The Great Escape

The Great Escape

OK, here We go. 8.3 Rating on IMDb...93% on Rotten Tomatoes...#119 in the Top 250 Films of All Time. What's the Point?...An Exercise in Futility...Spitting in the Wind...Tugging on Superman's Cape...But Let's Mess Around a Bit, just because We can. This is one of the Most Overrated Movies Ever. John Sturgess also Directed The Magnificent Seven (1960). So there is The GREAT Escape and The MAGNIFICENT Seven, so You know where this Guy's Head is, way up there in the Clouds, Nowhere near Earth and Reality, just like this Fabrication. Because this is Comic Book Stuff. The Director seems to have been Influenced by Stan Lee, the Creator of The FANTASTIC Four, The AMAZING Spider Man, and The INCREDIBLE Hulk. This Film is Hollywood Pablum. Glossy and Superficial. The Acting is Average and the Star Power is Typical of these Types of Movies that Parade "Names" around on Screen and in Ads to make the Thing seem more Important than it Actually is. It is Entertaining to a Point and is Watchable because it is just so Sweet, never Achieving Anything remotely Suspenseful or Terrifying, or really Very Exciting. Can Anyone say with a Straight Face that Steve McQueen's Motorcycle Chase is Riveting Cinema. It must also be said that Hogan's Heroes, that Long Running and Popular TV COMEDY, was Certainly Inspired by this, because when all is Said and Done, this is Nothing but a Long, Lightweight, Immensely Popular Movie Showing what Fun is to be had in a German POW Camp.

Wait. comedy? This is a war movie. Yes, it is supposed to be. It is not. What was planned as a serious, deep, psychological wartime escape drama, in reality turned into a raw, unbaked, half-cooked slapstick with awful character development, with awful performances, especially those from McQueen and Bronson, need one mention terribly laughable and horribly unserious delivery. The whole thing seems like a lame amateurish school play with absolutely irregular moves and wrong lines. I never, but never believed a single thing they said or did. The whole film just smacks of a cheap second-rate low-budget effort of a mediocre dubious merit. There is no merit, as even actors betray a playful unseriousness of what they say or do. Does the movie ever seem to be tragic or decent? Nay, even the killing spree seems to be staged or simply poor. Poor - this is the word. Every little detail in this film is poor or false.

'The Great Escape' had the advantage of a fine source, and a fine script... Each actor realizes his potential in a very detailed manner, giving a feeling lost in the actual cinema... Sturges is careful with the pace in the first half, allowing the escape plans develop slowly... Humor, excitement and human drama are wonderfully blended, and smartly underscored by Elmer Bernstein's memorable background music... The film opens with several truckloads of Allied officers, mostly pilots, being transferred to a new German maximum-security prison camp at Sagan... The Camp 'Kommandant', Von Luger (Hannes Messemer), tells Captain Ramsey (James Donald), 'We have, in effect, put all our rotten eggs in one basket, and we intend to watch this basket carefully.' But since all the British and American officers in his charge are men who have made several attempts to escape from other prison camps, Von Luger knows his words are meaningless... The master planner is 'Big X,' Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough), who has just endured three months of Gestapo/SS torture, and plans to strike back, getting as many men as possible out of the camp, in order to 'harass, confuse and confound the enemy' behind the lines... He announces a terrific plan for a mass break-out of 250 men and schemes three simultaneous tunnels Tom, Dick, and Harry... The plan, so precise, proceeds in an orderly fashion, with a great deal of attention placed on caution and ruse to deflect German attentions... The captives involve themselves in much surface activity, which masks the underground work... Hilts (Steve McQuenn), the 'Cooler King,' leads the Germans on a memorable motorcycle chase through back roads and across the fields right up to the Swiss frontier... Hendley (James Garner), the 'Scrounger' is a charming thief whose particular gift is the misappropriation of all the required supplies for an escape... Blythe (Donald Pleasance) has the talents of a 'Forger', and makes visas and passports... He suggests in one scene: ' Tea without milk is so uncivilized.' Danny Velinski (Charles Bronson) is the experienced Polish-American 'Tunnel-King.' Louis Sedgwick (James Coburn) is the 'Manufacturer' of bellows-operated ventilation... Ashley-Pitt (David McCallum) is the 'Dispersal' with his ingenious methods of getting rid of the dirt generated by the tunneling activities... Andy McDonald (Gordon Jackson ) is 'Intelligence,' the officer who develops a fantastic security system to protect the compounds from the German "Ferrets." Archibald Ives (Angus Lennie) is the 'Mole,' whose fragile mind has been taxed by several years in the camps, repeated failed escape attempts, and time in the cooler... Dennis Cavendish (Nigel Stock) is the 'Surveyor' who miscalculates the distance to the trees... Guard Werner (Robert Graf) is the 'Ferret' who affirms to Hendley: 'I could tell you stories about my teeth that would make your hair stand on end.' 'The Great Escape' is a pretty good motion picture where the toll of freedom is precious, and the movie's ending provokes deep and serious meditation... It graphically shows what enterprising men can accomplish under the most unusual circumstances... It has a great cast, and is beautifully made...

I saw this movie for the first time as a nine year old boy on a big screen in the Bronx. I'm now in my 40's. I have seen it many times since but not on the big screen. It was meant for the big screen! It's on my top five list along with The Sand Pebbles. It's a great movie about hope and freedom and man's responsibility to his fellow man. These men are all near saints; James Garner insisting on Donald Plesence making the escape, Charles Bronson fighting his claustrophobia. Steve McQueen is the star among the stars, not merely because of his motorcycle skills but for his attempt to save a life and for bringing the game of "off the wall" to the masses. :-)

This film had a stellar cast, and most of them delivered. The score was unusually cheerful and eerie, too. A strange combination. In reality, allied POW's in German detention camps were treated with contempt and without mercy. What we have in this film, however, are a bunch of guys who act like they belong in a country club. The country club/summer camp they reside in is a fun place, except you'll get shot if they catch you climbing the fence. That's it - no mention of the terrible brutality these guys actually endured or the fact that they were given barely enough food to live on. No mention of the atrocities regularly visited upon them by their Nazi captors, including beatings, executions, and forced marches. Instead, we get gentlemanly or comical Germans who seem to actually care what the POW's think of them. James Garner's character seems to epitomize the relaxed country club type who seems to be on vacation. He never takes off his turtleneck, which, no doubt, would cause the average person to perspire and stink after awhile. Steve McQueen, as usual, was the coolest guy in the room, but why would the Nazis allow him to have a baseball and glove to keep himself amused while in solitary confinement? Why didn't they just shoot him or beat the hell out of him after he was captured? Instead, they treated him like a naughty school boy. Richard Attenborough turned in a fine performance, but in reality, the Nazis would have never allowed him to take such a leadership role among the other prisoners. They would have singled him out and broken him instead of giving him respect. The film had many powerful moments: the motorcycle chase, the fatal error on the bus, the massacre, the shooting of the fence climber....these were all extremely well done. The film ultimately failed, though, because it did a disservice to the men who actually lived through this by failing to convey the wretched conditions of a German POW camp. The film had many moments where you had to suspend reality for such banal situations. Why in the world would the Nazis have ever allowed the Americans to hold a 4th of July celebration that include a parade, a picnic, and free-flowing vodka? Why would they allow a still on the premises to make homemade vodka from potatoes? Where did the Americans find a large American flag and why were they allowed to run it up a flagpole? Where did they find the smaller 13-star flag to wave around? Wasn't it out of character for Hilts to suddenly become a master flutist, blowing out a flawless rendition of "Yankee Doodle"? Colonel Klink would never have allowed Hogan and the boys such privileges! I'm surprised the Nazi guards didn't bake them cookies! What about when Hilts took out the planks from the bunkbeds (all of them) to use to reinforce the tunnel? The beds were now unusable, but the Germans didn't seem to notice all the guys sleeping on the floor, I guess. I could go on and on about these lapses in reality and this is why I wouldn't recommend this film for anyone over the age of 11. Add to this the 1960's film making habit of over illuminating all indoor scenes to the point where it seems like the actors need to wear sunglasses, and you have a very poor rendering of a POW camp. Was I the only one who noticed that the interactions and dialogue of these impeccably dressed and well-groomed men seemed like the goings-on in an upscale gay social club?

Over rated action/drama WW 2 escape film that suffers from extreme HOLLYWOOD formula watering down directng style.The acting was good but the soundtrack was very condescending and the atmosphere had no grit at all.All this was done on purpose by the film makers though as they targeted a more artistically challenged GENERAL AUDIENCE crowd.A how to for DISNEY STYLE war films.The result is a movie that had potential to be a MASTERPIECE CLASSIC but merely achieves a good rating.Also,blatant script inconsistensies can be very irritating to intelligent people, like Charles Bronson masterfully digging incredible tunnels like a super human Mole,then all of a sudden inexplicably turns into a CLAUSRTROPHOBIAC for over dramatic effect?!Please!If you want a great WW 2 escape film,check out BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI,VICTORY or STALAG 17 for that matter........