McQueen's Breakout Role Lifts Muddy Film

Rating: 6/10 (29 March 2009)

"The Great Escape" is okay popcorn fare, a "true-ish" World War II movie that serves the facts of the real story of Stalag Luft III decently and serves the film's stars better. That's particularly true of one star, Steve McQueen, who had his most famous five minutes on screen cycling across Bavaria and never looked back.
McQueen is Virgil Hilts, a "hotshot pilot" from the U.S. Army Air Force who makes for one restless POW. "I haven't seen Berlin yet, from the ground or from the air," he tells the commandant of his prison camp, Col. von Lugar (Hannes Messemer). "I plan on doing both before the war's over." Hilts isn't the only one in the camp with big plans. The British, led by Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough), plot a breakout involving no less than 250 inmates. "You're crazy...You oughta be locked up," Hilts tells Bartlett, pretty funny given their situation.
Was Bartlett's scheme really such a good idea, even if you factor out the Nazi propensity for brutal overreaction? I can't say I think it was, and maybe that's one mark I'd make against a film that pretty much celebrates the real-life episode as a majestic sacrifice rather than a glory-hound escapade that backfired horribly. The success rate certainly didn't justify the supposed benefit Bartlett speaks of, tying up a few German troops who were on garrison duty anyway and hardly shoring up the Dnieper River Line.
There are other issues I have with "The Great Escape". At two hours, fifty-two minutes, it's way overlong, with all but the last 45 minutes concerned with prep work. A script that was famously being written on the run creates various dramatic subplots involving the many characters which come and go as abruptly as James Coburn's Aussie accent.
What director John Sturges and his team do bring to "The Great Escape" is undeniable texture, a feeling for prison-camp life that feels real even as it plays at Sgt. Fury-style heroics. A cast who knew World War II all-too-well but were willing to pretend it was more adventure then nightmare also contribute. The one standout besides McQueen is second-billed James Garner as Hendley "the scrounger", whose scenes with both Donald Pleasance (as a fellow inmate, a "forger" going blind) and Robert Graf (as German guard Werner) account for much of the film's erratic charm. The rousing Elmer Bernstein score is instantly recognizable and hummable, and there's McQueen, in what seems the third and most significant stage of Sturges' star-making program, after "Never So Few" and "The Magnificent Seven."
Hilts is a strange center of gravity for "The Great Escape", spending most of his time away from the action, stuck in a cooler bouncing a baseball to himself while Attenborough directs things. Attenborough is a bit stiff; one senses his heart wasn't in the role. McQueen does get more involved in the plot as it rolls along, collecting bunk slats to buttress the tunnel being dug beneath the camp. He's not as loose as he would be later on; and struggles a bit with the more comedic scenes. Whoever came up with the idea of him marching through the camp playing a fife probably was drinking too much potato vodka. But his confrontations with von Lugar, scrunching his face into a cocky grin, give the film much of the lift it has when he's not on that motorcycle.
Messemer may have the film's most interesting role; a sympathetic Luftwaffe officer who pushes back when the Gestapo and SS tell him to take a firmer hand. He's a good man, even if he knows he's serving a bad cause, and his scenes with both McQueen and James Donald as the head British POW give you a sense of the emotional toll of war even when the combatants involved are decent.
Many people like this film better than I do, and bless them. It's smart and entertaining; sometimes both at once. You can't help but be moved by the story behind the film, real as it was. Too bad the question of "was it worth it" is never satisfactorily presented, let alone answered.