There once was a time when Hollywood made moving pictures for our two-fisted fathers and four-fisted grandfathers, solid men who slugged it out with Nazi beasts overseas like they were on the cover of a damn paperback novel. And perhaps the best movie to come from this lost era is the nail-spittin’ POW flick The Great Escape.
Based on the rousing true story, a daring team of Allied soldiers — mainly British — are stuck behind the walls of a Nazi prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III. Built especially for those captured servicemen who had been wasting Germany’s precious time and valuable resources with their constant escape attempts, it was supposed to be inescapable.
But with a camp full of hardened men who have only one thing on their minds — freedom — this crew comes up with an ingenious plan to get out at least 250 soldiers by digging three tunnels, right under the noses of the Germans. But you can make sure those kraut bastards are going to make them work for it every step of the way.
With Steve McQueen in a star-making role as Hilts, a captain with a bad attitude and good motorcycle skills, The Great Escape is well over three hours, but doesn’t feel like it, thanks to director John Sturges’ ability to make James Clavell and W.R. Burnett’s script constantly filled with chest hair-riddled action from start to finish.
Co-starring James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Donald Pleasence — to name a few — this is, for me at least, one of the best films ever made, the kind that couldn’t be made today … but thank God they made it yesterday. —Louis Fowler