The Great Escape

Not just great, simply magnificent more like!

"Wait a minute, you aren't seriously suggesting that if I get thru the wire and case everything out there, and don't get picked up, to turn myself in and get thrown in the cooler for a couple of months so you can get the information you need"

Smart, witty and directed with adroit hands by John Sturges, The Great Escape is standing the test of time as a joyous multi cast family favourite. Based on the real accounts of allied soldiers escaping en mass from a German POW camp back in 1942, the film is involving from start to finish, due in the main to the wonderful array of characters on show. We follow them from the moment they arrive at the camp right through to the stunning climax, and it i...

I can't watch this any more. It's a fun movie, one that my dad made me watch as a kid. One that I loved...

.... and then Eddie Izzard killed it for me. Now whenever I try to watch it all I do is think about his stand-up bit. I think it was from his "Dressed to Kill," maybe "Circle," but whichever it was, that is how you know you're hysterical, when you forever utterly ruin a classic movie because your routine surpasses the film you're making fun of.

Anyway, Izzard had a point, so it's fair I can't not think of him whenever I watch it. He turned Steve McQueen's character into a joke and I love him for it.

But, if you haven't seen the stand-up, it's a fun movie. It's not as good as Stalag 13, but it's more of an action film and one t...

Got to be the definition of an all star (albeit all male) cast in this gripping demonstration of just how inventive and ingenious people can be when incarcerated and facing a bleak (if any) future. Each character in this WWII POW drama brings something different to this ensemble of style and imagination. Richard Attenborough stars as the proverbial pain in the ass to his Nazi guards having repeatedly escaped before, and he puts together his "X" organisation to work every scheme imaginable to get people out of this supposedly escape proof "Super-Stalag ". Steve McQueen forms an unlikely alliance with Angus "the Mole" Lennie; James "the scrounge" Garner with the expert, tea-drinking, forger Donald Pleasance whose eyesight is failing rapidly; ...