1979 Directed by Don Siegel
San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.
Clint Eastwood Patrick McGoohan Roberts Blossom Jack Thibeau Fred Ward Paul Benjamin Larry Hankin Bruce M. Fischer Frank Ronzio Fred Stuthman David Cryer Hank Brandt Ray K. Goman Blair Burrows Madison Arnold Garry Goodrow Ron Vernan Ed Vasgersian Matthew Locricchio Bob Balhatchet Stephen Bradley Regina Baff Joe Miksak Candace Bowen Don Michaelian Dan Leegant John Garabedian Jason Ronard Ross Reynolds Show All…
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Straight to the point, no nonsense thriller - Entering the prison and then "Escape from Alcatraz".
“We don’t make good citizens, but we make good prisoners”
This was an enjoyable movie but it lacked a bit of tension and some characters were a bit too flat. The movie was also a bit slow but the story was well written enough for it to still be engaging most of the time, and despite it’s flaws I still had a good time with it.
Clint Eastwood plays the smart and cool main character Frank, who we don’t really get to know anything about. This should make him an interesting and mysterious guy but instead it made him a smartass, who I didn’t didn’t care much for. He also had tons of stupid one liners, that didnt really…
love all the early parts that are designed to highlight the mechanized, dehumanizing cruelty of the prison structure. the effort to crush, humiliate and maintain harsh uniformity. the introduction especially with that perfectly symmetrical cage-like imagery of the prison halls and eastwood forced to walk them completely (literally) exposed as a piece of meat on an assembly line, which you can then draw a direct line to the later scene of a prisoner turning himself into chopped meat with a hatchet in protest. all of this entirely to provide a dramatic context/momentum to the 2nd half that is all taut, stripped-down engineering by both eastwood and siegal, who use as few words as possible and rely entirely on a bressonian…
Prison sure seems like a drag. Bad food, not much to do, isolation, racism, constant threats of physical and sexual violence. And how about those guards? Why are they so mean all the time? I can see why you'd go to all this trouble!
"You fellas have a lot of growing up to do, I'll tell you that. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Can you believe these characters? Way out of line. Way out of line. Have a good mind to go to the warden about this. You know what hurts the most is the... the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the... Except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most."
A Siegel/Eastwood version of A Man Escaped? Yes please. Totally rocks. Almost unbearably suspenseful at times. Clint's eyebrow and squint acting: off-the-charts. When it comes to movie-watching, this movie is pretty much the best-case scenario.
“Escape from Alcatraz” is a prison break film as sparse as a jail cell, and as calculating as the man able to free himself from it.
Don Siegel’s final collaboration with Clint Eastwood is based on the true account of three men who managed to flee the most infamous island fortress in America. Their fates - drowned or liberated - are just about all that’s left to ambiguity in Siegel’s work.
After a fistful of partnerships between Siegel and Eastwood, the duo seem to have lost their zest for explosiveness. Eastwood in “Alcatraz” is languidly over-controlled. His gruff aggression from “Dirty Harry,” and his libido-chasing energy from “The Beguiled” dull here into passivity.
The single mindedness with which Eastwood pursues…
Having been to Alcatraz just made this all the more weird and awesome. Siegel squeezes out every last bit of tension of this extremely fascinating true story which leads to a satisfying finale.
Charley Butts got me all kinds of sad.
Escape from Alcatraz was one of the films I played back in my old hotel pay-per-view playback operator job ( sort of like a second tier projectionist back in the day ). I took notice of it, and watched it a fair few number of times. Our outfit would usually get the Eastwood movies as they consistently sold well to the travelling salesman crowd that made up our customer base. I’d been introduced to Eastwood at the drive-in as a kid with the Leone classics; later Play Misty For Me at a rep theatre with a projectionist friend who later got me the said hotel PPV playback op job. Somehow Eastwood was a thread in me becoming aware of movies…
Based on the true story of one of the few inmates that may or may have not successfully escaped from The Rock aka Alcatraz prison, it was also the final collaboration between Don Siegel and Eastwood, being Dirty Harry their most successful.
The premise itself is so interesting that immediately gauge my attention and had me somewhat invested. Eastwood, playing the archetypical Clint Eastwood role of the enigmatic and kiiiinda charming tough man, was as to be expected pretty entertaining to watch, even though his performance is far from being showy or anything down that line. There's enough moments that allow him to show the audience his wit and his skills as a fighter and a man that takes no…
Rock-solid prison-movie depravity, Jerry Fielding’s screeching score and the racially skewed dialogue of the seventies darkening the tone just when you thought it couldn’t get darker. The crashing waves of San Fransisco Bay scream a chilly sense of dread, Eastwood is alive as ever, and Siegel makes Dirty Harry seem like something of a sunny walk in the park by comparison. One particular scene involving a carpentry work-detail and a hatchet is so strong in its nausea-inducing horror, it had me slack-jawed gawping at the screen long after it was over. There might be one too many sketchy scene transitions, or an overall lack of realism in its whimsical depiction of certain inmates, but the film’s central message is a thoughtfully articulated one. Take everything a man has, he’s capable of anything.
