Give 'em Hell, boys!

Rating: 10/10 (25 July 2019)

The escape itself happens a little more than halfway through the film, and most of the rest of the movie focuses on the allied trying to evade capture. The men are mostly spread out at this point, and some of them are captured almost immediately, while others give way to a much better chase. As these scenes played out, I kept thinking back to the first meeting between Attenborough and the German officer, and how Attenborough insists that it's their duty to make the German's lives hell. That's what this movie is really about. Even though some of the prisoners do escape, that wasn't the entire point. The point was to make the German soldiers hate every waking moment of their lives, and in that, the allied soldiers succeeded admirably. I think that's why I liked this movie more than even "The Bridge on the River Kwai", the only other comparable POW camp movie I've seen. "Bridge" is a fantastic film filled with wonderful high adventure, but this film isn't about blowing up a bridge or accomplishing some great task (though if they'd all escaped that would've been something great indeed), this movie is just about sticking it to the oppressive powers with everything you have; it's about fighting what's evil even if the only thing you can do in the long run is irritate it and make it more angry.
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