It's Great Escapist!

Rating: 8/10 (5 April 2006)

I guess we can all call Hollywood to task for its war movies. Until recently, they were pretty sanitized. Did you ever see a John Wayne movie where his buddies were beheaded or dismembered. People die in a nice peaceful way, usually throwing their arms in the air, slinging their guns behind them. We don't even see the wound. When "The Great Escape" came out, this was pretty much the case. The other prisoner of war movie to gain popularity with the general population was "Stalag 17" with Robert Ryan as the bad guy. Does it matter. If we are going to stretch reality anyway, can we make our Germans the way we want them. We can make our allied prisoners experts in various types of demolition and subterfuge. With that understood, we now create a magical effort to fool those bad guys and make a grand escape from the prison camp. The writers did a nice job, building suspense and anticipation. Enough roadblocks are thrown up to make it fun. And, of course, this is a real prison camp with real guards and real bullets. No one should look at the ripoff mentality of "Hogan's Heroes" and think that there is a comparison. As one writer said, the Germans would not have been too happy with what was going on and wouldn't have been so careless and so dumb. Nevertheless, like any adventure movie worth its salt, this is great fun.