Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Directed by Don Siegel. Starring Clint Eastwood, Larry Hankin, Paul Benjamin, Patrick McGoohan, Frank Ronzio, Fred Ward, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau, Bruce M. Fischer. [PG]

Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood are back in Dirty Harry Callahan’s San Francisco, but Eastwood’s on the other side of the law here, playing hardened criminal Frank Morris, newly arrived to Alcatraz after being caught some time after escaping the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He and three others work together to fly the coop from the maximum security prison notorious for being impossible to escape. The usual prison break movie elements are here—a cruel warden (McGoohan), friends and foes among the inmate population, the casual overlooking of the “hero”’s amoral past, the taut planning stages, the narrow window in which the scheme can be executed, etc.—and Siegel is just the sort of wily veteran to pull them off in an unfussy, hard-hitting fashion. Richard Tuggle’s script, however, is more concerned with technical detail than characterizations (half of the would-be escapees aren’t really examined at all), and Siegel’s suspense scenes tend to drag on too long, negating the anxiety over what amounts to a near-sure thing (the story and most of the major players are liberally based in reality, after all). Shot primarily on location at the prison-turned-tourist-attraction. Try to spot Danny Glover as an inmate in the prison library, his first motion picture appearance.

68/100