Movie Review – The Great Escape

The Great Escape (1963) – A group of Allied soldiers with long records of trying to escape from German POW camps are transferred to a camp specifically designed to contain them.  They begin to plan the largest prisoner escape of the war.  Based on a true story.

Welcome to another “spot the stars” movie.  The cast is impressive.  Steve McQueen, Jame Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn, and David McCallum.  They bring a fairly accurate version of the story of a massive escape from a German prison camp Stalag Luft III.  The original plan involved three tunnels and the escape of over 200 soldiers.  In the end only a single tunnel would be “completed” (it had issues but I won’t drop a spoiler on you) and only 76 men managed to escape.  Kudos to screenwriter James Clavell and director John Sturges for not giving into a “Hollywood” ending.  It takes a solid war movie and makes it into something really striking.

This is the classic Hollywood war movie.  The prison camp is clean and orderly.  The cast is made up of manly, strong male characters who never let anything get them down.  They’re resourceful and cheerful and there’s no chance they are going to be defeated.  It’s fun watching them come up solutions for a variety of major engineering problems (like making sure there is fresh air the whole way along an almost 112 yard long tunnel that is 9 yards underground.  What is even more amazing is realizing what you see in the movie is exactly what the prisoners pulled off, right under the guards noses!

What’s nice are the places where they take even small steps away from the standard war movie script.  Bronson’s character develops a serious case of claustrophobia, which is a problem as a primary digger.  Staying with the factual ending.

The major disappoints are Coburn’s AWFUL Australian accent, and the rather unimpressive McQueen role.  There were in fact no Americans at Stalag Luft III but the studio felt they needed one for the audience.  McQueen then insisted his role be expanded.  Unfortunately, what we end up with isn’t really worth the screen time.  There’s a recurring story line/joke that isn’t too bad but the rest you could easily eliminate and you wouldn’t miss it.

On the whole it is a worthy addition to the war movie genre and shows enough beyond the usual fare to be worthy of putting it on your list.

Rating – **** Recommended