182. The Great Escape (1963)
I haven't seen Berlin yet, from the ground or from the air, and I plan on doing both before the war is over.
Title: The Great Escape
Date Watched: 12/16/2012
Original Ranking Out of 10: 9
Revised Ranking Out of 10: 9
Synopsis: A team of POW escapees plan to break out of a heavily guarded German prison camp.
The Good: Epic in scope and mostly pretty exciting, despite its age. Steve McQueen is the ultimate badass.
The Bad: Weak structure and the final third drags -- mainly because we're following too many characters that we don't care about who are all essentially doing the same thing.
Why Do I Own This Movie?: Amoeba trade-in, I'm pretty sure.
Should I Still Own This Movie?: Yes.
What Did I Notice That I Didn't Notice Before?: We're supposed to be impressed that some of these guys escaped from POW camps upwards of 17 or 18 times... Doesn't that also imply that they had been captured 17 or 18 times?
Other Impressions: This is one of those great old epics, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which goes on forever, isn't paced particularly well, but is just so cool that it manages to entertain despite its issues. So, even while admitting that the characters are paper thin, the Nazis don't seem particularly Nazi-like, and the end goes on way too long, I still love this movie. It doesn't present World War II as it likely was (maybe Saving Private Ryan does a better job of this) but, instead, it presents World War II in the same way as the propaganda did. These men are heroes, performing heroic deeds, so the movie celebrates their efforts with bright colors and upbeat march music. It's a happier World War II.
Again, with that in mind, I didn't find it too difficult to accept every single one of the things that the prisoners did to escape. I buy that a large group of trained soldiers could have tunneled out in much the same way as the movie presented the titular escape. And so, even though The Great Escape presents war as a boyish fantasy, it's still convincing.
The Great Escape doesn't offer any kind of depth and it's not a classic in the same way that, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane are, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun and something of a relic. I don't think we can make a war movie with this kind of levity anymore. Inglorious Basterds sort of attempted this, I guess, but it blended the lightheartedness with a dark story of revenge.
This is mainly a cultural thing. We no longer live in a society where we can see war without noticing the sheer brutality of it. And this is a good thing. But movies are usually meant as escapism so, while The Hurt Locker may provide a more accurate depiction of what war is like (and is, probably, the better movie), The Great Escape represents what we wish war was like and, as a result, is much more fun.
The List
Title: The Great Escape
Date Watched: 12/16/2012
Original Ranking Out of 10: 9
Revised Ranking Out of 10: 9
Synopsis: A team of POW escapees plan to break out of a heavily guarded German prison camp.
The Good: Epic in scope and mostly pretty exciting, despite its age. Steve McQueen is the ultimate badass.
The Bad: Weak structure and the final third drags -- mainly because we're following too many characters that we don't care about who are all essentially doing the same thing.
Why Do I Own This Movie?: Amoeba trade-in, I'm pretty sure.
Should I Still Own This Movie?: Yes.
What Did I Notice That I Didn't Notice Before?: We're supposed to be impressed that some of these guys escaped from POW camps upwards of 17 or 18 times... Doesn't that also imply that they had been captured 17 or 18 times?
Other Impressions: This is one of those great old epics, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which goes on forever, isn't paced particularly well, but is just so cool that it manages to entertain despite its issues. So, even while admitting that the characters are paper thin, the Nazis don't seem particularly Nazi-like, and the end goes on way too long, I still love this movie. It doesn't present World War II as it likely was (maybe Saving Private Ryan does a better job of this) but, instead, it presents World War II in the same way as the propaganda did. These men are heroes, performing heroic deeds, so the movie celebrates their efforts with bright colors and upbeat march music. It's a happier World War II.
Again, with that in mind, I didn't find it too difficult to accept every single one of the things that the prisoners did to escape. I buy that a large group of trained soldiers could have tunneled out in much the same way as the movie presented the titular escape. And so, even though The Great Escape presents war as a boyish fantasy, it's still convincing.
The Great Escape doesn't offer any kind of depth and it's not a classic in the same way that, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane are, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun and something of a relic. I don't think we can make a war movie with this kind of levity anymore. Inglorious Basterds sort of attempted this, I guess, but it blended the lightheartedness with a dark story of revenge.
This is mainly a cultural thing. We no longer live in a society where we can see war without noticing the sheer brutality of it. And this is a good thing. But movies are usually meant as escapism so, while The Hurt Locker may provide a more accurate depiction of what war is like (and is, probably, the better movie), The Great Escape represents what we wish war was like and, as a result, is much more fun.
The List