Stunning nail biter of a film, and surely one of the best prison break movies ever made.
Burt Lancaster stars as a convict who organizes an escape from a maximum security prison. Hume Cronyn is the evil warden who gets wind of the plan and tries to stop it. The film is tough, muscular, and brutal, and it fires on all cylinders for the length of its running time. I could muster up some minor quibbles if pressed, like the fact that Cronyn's character is taken a little too far, or that some unnecessary flashbacks of the events that led the various men to their prison sentences slow the momentum down a bit. But these quibbles are very minor, because the flashbacks don't slow the film down that much -- I'm sure they were included to give the men a little bit of extra rooting interest, which I didn't need myself. I was already rooting for them because....well, just because I was. But they do flesh out the characters a bit and provide the actors with a bit more to do than look hot and tense. And as for Cronyn -- yes, he takes sadistic to pretty spectacular extremes, but it's then that much more satisfying to see him taken down at the end.
This film is a winner.
Grade: A
Burt Lancaster stars as a convict who organizes an escape from a maximum security prison. Hume Cronyn is the evil warden who gets wind of the plan and tries to stop it. The film is tough, muscular, and brutal, and it fires on all cylinders for the length of its running time. I could muster up some minor quibbles if pressed, like the fact that Cronyn's character is taken a little too far, or that some unnecessary flashbacks of the events that led the various men to their prison sentences slow the momentum down a bit. But these quibbles are very minor, because the flashbacks don't slow the film down that much -- I'm sure they were included to give the men a little bit of extra rooting interest, which I didn't need myself. I was already rooting for them because....well, just because I was. But they do flesh out the characters a bit and provide the actors with a bit more to do than look hot and tense. And as for Cronyn -- yes, he takes sadistic to pretty spectacular extremes, but it's then that much more satisfying to see him taken down at the end.
This film is a winner.
Grade: A