Review of The Great Escape (1963) by Arshi R — 30 Jul 2010

Grade: C+.

The Great Escape accounts a true story, of the attempted escaping of allied prisoners in a German Stalag during WWII. The film begins with lengthy scene introducing a host of well known actors (playing mostly British and American soldiers) arriving at the Stalag as POW?s. Kommandant von Luger has collected all of these trouble making escape artists to keep them all under a single watch, with a ?heavy? soldier presence to make escape difficult.

Steve McQueen is a cocky American POW with a talent for escaping, and a bigger talent for getting caught; this repeatedly results in ?The Cooler?, for a few days or maybe twenty. Attenborough is the lead British POW, leading a large squadron of POWs in a massive and multi-faceted escape plan involving long term escape methods like forged identification and learning some German.

There are a lot of characters and sub-plots to keep up with, some of which get more screen time, others just one or two major moments. The most touching and memorable for me is obviously the relationship between ?the forger? (Donald Pleasence) and ?The Scrounger?(James Garner), which starts out as a purely formal relationship about stealing things to help the POW?s, but turns into a great tale of true friendship. For background info on all the other little characters (James Coburn as the Manufacturer, etc.) check out IMDB or the films page on RT. I thought Garner was probably the best part of the film, not McQueen or Attenborough. His scenes definitely provided the most interest for me, and the least redundancy. His scenes with the nervous Nazi soldier were funny and interesting to watch, and Nazi soldier is very well acted and cast.

Elmer Bernstein?s music kept me more into the film than anything else. From the first moment of the film to the last, it was the one thing that never annoyed, and the sound of the music fits even the more humorous scenes just as well as the straight action ones.

But alas, the film was way too long, especially the last hour save the final 10 minutes. Big stretches could have been conveyed in a much tighter and more coherent way. I get that director John Sturges wants to instil some depth into the story, but come on; learn how to edit. Some of the action would?ve benefited from a bit of glossing over, instead of all of this repetition which begins to get a little overbearing, and boring for the eyes. The escape felt literally like it would never end, and I started to want it to.

Overall the film is only sporadically interesting. It is engaging when we see and feel the natural ingenuity of the script, and the multiple escape tactics used to complete the daunting task of escape. But too much oftern is instead the boring filler that comprises much of the film and is made to look important. It may be my fault, but I didn?t find a lot of the characters to be very interesting. The characters were funny, a little cynical, kind of over the top sometimes. But everything felt so rigid. Billy Wilder?s Stalag 17 is a much better film I think, even if it?s not a great one either.