A Simply Terrific Movie

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2006)

Sorry ladies, but "The Great Escape" is the ultimate GUY movie.
I'll never forget watching this movie when I was about ten or eleven, with my then super-cool brother-in-law, who I realize now was a bit of a slimeball but who at the time I looked up to for the very things that made him a slimeball. But lest you think my fondness for this movie rests only on its associations in my mind and not on its quality, I have seen it since and it holds up remarkably well.
Who can forget the iconic image of Steve McQueen taking off across that field on his motorcycle? We can look back now and see that that image served as an announcement of a new and radical shakeup taking place in film and popular culture, and that the next decade or so would be ruled by the renegade and the bad boy. "Easy Rider," "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Graduate," "The Wild Bunch" would all come later. "The Great Escape" came first.
Grade: A