Prison Break: Great Films About Busting Out
Annotation:1963. Directed by John Sturges. Starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. Depicting an escape by Allied prisoners of war from aGerman POW camp during World War II, the film is based on the eponymous book by Paul Brickhill, a non-fiction account of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III in Sagan (now Żagań, Poland), in the province of Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany.
Annotation:1953. Directed by Billy Wilder. Tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is a traitor.
Annotation:"In a spoof of the great wartime escape movies, arrogant RAF Officer James Forrester, who has 23 escape attempts to his name and zero escapes, plans the Big One, the escape of all 327 prisoners from a POW camp in Germany. The only problem is he expects them to escape all at once"--Container.
Annotation:1967. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted from Pearce's 1965 eponymous novel. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D. Cannon and Morgan Woodward. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison camp[3] who refuses to submit to the system.
Annotation:1973. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. Based on the best-selling autobiography by French convict Henri Charrière, one of the few people to successfully escape from the notorious French penal colony of Devil's Island. Steve McQueen plays the pugnacious Charriere (known as "Papillon," or "butterfly," because of a prominent tatoo), incarcerated--wrongly, he claims--for murdering a pimp. He saves the life of fellow convict Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), a counterfeiter who will later show his gratitude by helping Charriere in his many escape attempts, and by smuggling food to Charriere when the latter is put in solitary confinement.
Annotation:1979 American thriller film. Directed by Don Siegel. Starring Clint Eastwood. It dramatizes perhaps the only successful escape attempt from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. The film co-stars Fred Ward, and also features Patrick McGoohan as the suspicious, vindictive warden, and features the film debut of Danny Glover.
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