The Great Escape (1963)

One of my all time favorites.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attonbourgh, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn. How can you make a bad movie from this stellar cast? The Great Escape is a classic war/adventure film. Although it is more than that. It is an exciting escape film filled with great acting, exciting action and suspenseful moments. It really has the whole package. You could easily argue when it comes to historical accuracy but I hardly take that into account anymore unless it is detrimental to the story. It is not all action though. Much of the movie is exposition but the dialogue is well written and the actors do such a good job that it is hard to turn away. Director John Sturges is a personal favorite director of mine and he does a great job here. It is a classic epic that is a necessity for classic movie and action movie fans.

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 is a great film. The main problem with it is that in the UK it has been shown on TV probably twice a year at least since it's first TV showing - in fact it seems like more. When it is on I, for one, usually try to avoid it but if I do catch 5 minutes then I am hooked all over again! The cast is wonderful, a mixture of real stars and character actors. Although it is a long film the pacing is superb and the viewer's attention is held throughout. My favourite characters are played by James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn,Richard Attenborough and James Donald. Steve McQueen plays Hiltz the cooler king in his usual laconic, comic style but I find it annoying considering American POWs did not make such a huge contribution to escapes like these. It was great to see so many actors from The Magnificent Seven (another awesome favourite of mine) back on screen and directed again by John Sturges - he knew what he was doing in casting.

I don't claim to have been in WWII—or maybe I was, during a past life— but this I know for sure: life in a German POW camp had nothing to do with what we see in TGE, let alone a POW camp where they had gathered Allied airmen. See, at a time when Allied warplanes were bombing German cities to dust the German populace had developed a deep hatred for all them and when they had the chance to get their hands on one of them the poor sap was lucky if all he got, before the local military came to get him, was just a good beating. In fact a number of them were lynched by irate mobs. Not to mention that many had had to bail out from their burning planes and then land on mud, water, bushes; had to spend hours, days, hiding in barns, forests, running for their lives, before being caught. And that some of their camp wardens had suffered themselves the effects of their bombing, lost homes, probably dear ones because of it and so were in no mood for youthful pranks. Not, life wasn't a picnic in those German POW camps. Not to mention that the Luftwaffe was a Nazi haven, Goering's baby. And yet what we see here is more like a group of well fed and contended, sharp and alert vacationers arriving to their resort in the heart of nature. If it wasn't for the guns you could even picture the German guards handing out leaflets with the activities of the day while Hendley looks for a comfy spot where to light up his pipe and engage in some good reading.But things don't get any better as we trod along, as we are next subjected to a stream of usual 60s war flick clichés, not the smallest of them that of the decent, fair, even likable German military officers who "are just doing their duty", as opposed to the dastardly Gestapo and SS goons. If you have seen enough of these U.S-U.K war flicks of the 50s, 60s you got to be familiar with the obvious dichotomy. Now, while I am sure that there were many honest and fair German military fighting in that war—despite the well known complicity of the brass of the Wehrmacht with the atrocities of the Nazis—the fact that they are a staple in these war flicks is not so much due to Hollywood's regard for historical truths as due to necessities of the Cold War, which by the 60s was going full steam. As Germany had gone from enemy to NATO ally, it wasn't anymore sensible to depict their military men as murderous brutes—as it was the case during the war of course—so they got around all it just putting all their bad deeds on the shoulders of the SS and Gestapo. That is the main reason why there are always nice, good, fair Germans in these war flicks.Now, if TGE is already looking pretty unrealistic by the moment McQueen's Hilts appears, with him it turns into a real masquerade. For one, Hilts must be the only man in History who comes out of a month in solitary confinement in a German POW camp looking far better than he did when he got in. With clean clothes—remember, he had entered all covered in mud—impeccable, well groomed, perfectly shaved. (Who washed his clothes, who cut, combed, his hair there, who gave him such clean shaves?) I'm not fan of Guns of Navarone, but compared to this one it looks like Shakespeare because, despite all its shortcomings it still has that aura of reality, is still happening in the real world, it still gives us a sense of what really Nazi occupation looked and felt like, In TGE there is instead there is no tension, no sense of vulnerability, no fear for your life from the part of the POWs. You feel like watching the youthful shenanigans of a bunch of teens in summer camp who, if caught will get just a slap in the wrist. See for ex. that after Tilts physically attacks two guards armed with automatic guns he is just let go scot free, he is not even reprimanded! After that scene you can't possible take TGE seriously. And what about guard Warner, who is smart enough to immediately discover the concealed tunnel but not enough to put the obvious two plus two together, that Hendley was the one who stole his wallet?. But the unrealistic reaches new heights with that Fourth of July parade. The German would have never ever allowed such a thing. No military in the world would ever allow their POWs such kind of display, let alone the Germans, who knew well how dangerous the mix of beer and flag waving could be. All that is pure Hollywood mythology. And to make things even worse, we got Steve McQueen, who every time he is on the screen, no matter what he does, say, he seems to be flaunting his star ratings. Not for a moment he makes you feel you are watching a real POW there, a man that feels impotent because deprived of his freedom, totally vulnerable to the whims and moods of his captors, but instead he gives you all along the feeling that Steve McQueen is all that there is to watch there and the rest is secondary. He feels all along so sure of himself that he can even engage in a staring contest with a SS heavy, a guy who could turn him into dust with a gesture of his little finger. But of course he knows he can do that, after all he is making thousands times more dough for this flick than the other guy, and than everyone else. He is the star here and he will never let them forget it, neither you, the spectator. In all, not worth watching, except for his fans. 3/10.