Mediocre POW flick

Rating: 2/10 (11 November 2018)

Stalag 17, like lots of other movies who have won veteran actors an Oscar, is a completely forgettable movie that would be looked at as mediocre at best if not for the simple fact that it won a veteran actor an Oscar. Would Butterfield 8 be famous if Elizabeth Taylor didn't win an Oscar? How about Lilies of the Field? Probably not, and neither would Stalag 17.
In a prisoner-of-war camp, William Holden, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Richard Erdman, Peter Graves and others are stuck together, none of them outranking each other, and each suspecting the other of cooperating with the enemy. Their German captors are getting leaked information about planned escapes; who is the mole? You'll have to rent this one to find out, and also to find out if they wind up with a successful escape plan. Personally, this isn't the best escape-from-prison flick, nor is it the best POW camp flick, nor is it the best William Holden flick. If you want to see him in a war movie, you've got two other good choices: The Bridges of Toko-Ri and The Bridge Over the River Kwai.