The Great Escape II: The Untold Story (1988)

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The issue with this "true story" is that it was a made for America TV film, as a follow up to a cinema film that had already been twisted to add an American interest. By the time you get to the stage of this film it's very difficult to make for an audience who will have very little connection to the real story - i.e. that 76 predominantly European or Commonwealth service men escaped from a PoW camp, 73 were re-captured and under direct orders from Hitler 50 were executed in ones and twos by SS and Gestapo henchmen.The film itself, if it didn't have the silly "untold story" tag, would be passable TV fare. The investigation, the depiction of the nature of the murders (i.e. individuals rather than the 50 in a field as per the original) are realistic whilst not necessarily being true. The fact it plays loose with who did the investigating and what actually happened is only an issue if you are looking for the true story.If you're looking for a film about war crimes and investigating them, then as TV movies go this is OK. If you're looking for the real "untold story" then don't believe everything you see in this production.

Many of the names, such as Reeve's John Dodge and MacShane's Roger Bushnell were actual characters. (And yes, Dodge *was* related to Churchill!) If you've read the book, then you know there is a great deal of fact in this telefilm.True, there's no romance in the novel, but as Hitchcock said, "It's only a mo-vie." And instead of the master assassin being killed, he was taken to trial. But overall, if you manage to see this in its entirety, you should enjoy it. (Well, you know what I mean.What makes this even more interesting is the presence of Donald Pleasance, one of the stars of the 1963. Plus, Jud Taylor, who directed Part 2, was also in the film.

I only saw this silly made-for-TV sequel in it's chopped-down 93-minute video version, and it was quite obvious that there were many things missing. On the plus side, I didn't care.Where THE GREAT ESCAPE was a somewhat-fictionalized version of a true story, GE2 is a fictional story which only touches reality at odd points (and sometimes the oddest: the part about recognizing some Gestapo officers from a painting in a nightclub is true).The real story of the investigation of the Stalag Luft III murders would probably have been a lot more interesting, but there might not have been a part in that for Christopher Reeve.

After one large movie and this made-for-TV version, why can't someone stop messing around with the true story of the "Great Escape" and present it as it actually happened. The ending also fails to make clear that there were 2 UK-mounted war crimes trials of the murderers of the 50 escapees. Also Burchardt in real life was sentenced to death by hanging at the 2nd trial, but was reprieved. There are loads of other changes from the real events, but then Hollywood and the film industry has rarely cared about accuracy.