The Great Escape

Media:	DVD
Directed by:	John Sturges
Starring:	Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn
Release date:	18 December, 2001
List price:	~~$14.94~~
Our price:	$10.13 that is 32% off!

The Great Escape

Average rating: Stars

Great movie, but so-so on DVD

This is the definitive story of escape during WW11. And, despite what a previous reviewer said, there were Americans in the camp, and Americans played a big part in digging the tunnel, and in all other operations. The reason no Americans actually escaped using the tunnel, was they were moved to their own compound (south compound) before the tunnel broke. The characters in the movie are composites, and are livened up a bit for dramatic purposes, but most exist. The man who was clausrophobic was a South African named Johnny Travis. He had worked in the gold mines, and was caught in a mine collapse before the war making him afraid of small spaces. He did dig this tunnel, and others, before they discovered he had a gift for making things and moved him to manufacturing escape kits. The "Cooler King" was actually American Colonel Jerry Sage, a member of the O.S.S. and one of the most fearless men ever seen in a prison camp (he actually stole the Commandant's alarm clock from beside his bed, but the other prisoner's were afraid to ask him how he managed it). Being American he did not have a chance to use the tunnel. But he did always take his glove and ball into the cooler. (Sage did eventually escape by other means - read his book "Sage: Dagger of the O.S.S.") If you want to know how this escape really happened this is the movie for you. Just buy the VHS version, unless you already have a widescreen set-up.

The Great Escape - Steve McQueen, James Garner and more

They earned their pay that day!

One of the all time great films about the human spirit that refuses to bow to tyranny. The story being of mostly British and Commonwealth pilots imprisoned in a Max. Security POW Camp. I don't want to give it away for those poor unfortunents that have not seen it yet. But it is a whale of a great story that is well worth the coin. Good to go to all involved!

Steve McQueen, James Garner and more - The Great Escape

Well, you kind of miss McQueen, don't you?

Just an excellent movie. In today's world we are enraptured with doing and saying the right thing, and we forget that in the times of our fathers and our grandfathers, captured American and Allied soldiers were kept in POW camps generally in rotten conditions. The three great prison camp movies will forever be Stalag 13, with William Holden, River Kwai also with Holden and Alec Guiness, and this one, The Great Escape.

The Great Escape, like the others, is based loosely on fact (there was a River Kwai and a Stalag 13) and brings together some great faces from 45 years ago.

If the film has a drawback, and by no means does this reflect anything but a superior film, it's the hint of a semi-comedic touch. The guys jumping under a pile of Christmas trees to make it out of the camp; the 'humorous' Nazi Major with the pitchfork. I have to believe that being a prisoner of war in Germany in 1943-44 had to be a terrible experience. Hollywood, and Sturges here to some extent, can be excused for making the very most of Garner, Coburn, Attenborough, McQueen and Pleasence. None the less, I found it distracting. If you were captured in Japan, you never made it to the POW camp. You were hung in the streets.

The duty of American prisoners was to escape. And that's what John Sturges brings to the fore with his great ensemble. A great, rousing movie with great photography and wonderful music by Elmer Bernstein. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury