600 Allied Airmen were captured by the Nazi Party and sent to a prison camp. A 60 acre camp, with 12,000 ft of steel razor wire with four armed guards on each roost while also having guards on ground level with dogs. It should be impossible to leave, but the men in the camp also can have their fun with education, sports, gardening, scrouging, and tunneling. All great things for a team of allied soldiers that are planning to leave; this team is run by Bartlett “Big X” (Richard Attenborough), and they are all given code names as well as their own; there is Hilts, the “Cooler” (Steve McQueen); then there is the tunnels expert Danny “Tunnel King” (Charles Bronson). There is also Hendely, the “Scrounger” (James Garner), then Blythe, the “Forger” (Donald Pleasance); as well as Sedgwick “Manufacturer” (James Coburn), Ashley Pitt, the “Disperser” (David McCallum); lastly, Sedgwick, the “Mole” (Angus Lennie). The only problem is they have to make sure the Commandant Von Luger (Hanse Messmer) does not catch them. You now know the men and their jobs, get to it and don’t get caught, good luck.
This is your average Steve McQueen prison film; he plays the hero that is going to escape no matter what. The major stunt that McQueen was supposed to do, the 60 foot jump over barbed wire fencing, he did not do. The studio told him he could do all of his own stunts for the rest of the film, but they said there was too much risk with doing this stunt. So instead, McQueen’s good friend who was the stunt man for the film, Bud Ekins, did the jump. An interesting piece of information on the film was that they got the real “Tunnel King”, Wally Floody, as a technical advisor to the film. As well as Floody who thought that it would be a better idea if the special effects team dug real life scale size tunnels for Charles Bronson to go through for a more realistic touch. To continue on the topic, Floody also helped costumes with making accurate uniforms for the soldiers– they did not wear prison uniforms, they wore their own clothes– but the dispersers wore special clothing with bags in their pant legs with a draw string in their pocket to disperse the dirt on the grounds without being caught. There were also conflicts on the set with James Garner and Steve McQueen, and how Garner felt that McQueen’s ego got in the way too much during the film. Another fun fact about the film, the most interesting fact in this film, was that Donald Pleasance who plays the forger in this film, as a POW, was actually a POW himself during WWII. I truly have a lot of respect for this film because when I watch it, there’s a constant feeling of excitement when I see it– of heart pounding fear of some of the guys not getting caught, or the Tunnel King getting buried alive. It’s a true story that is a wild ride of a film, with good acting to boot. The script was written fairly well, not as accurate to the true events, because there were over 6,000 POWs in that camp, but I understand what the writers were trying to do. It would not be that interesting if there were 4,000 POWs trying to escape, it would not be believable. Overall it is a solid 7.5 film, I give the acting 8 silver bars, I give the director 7 silver bars, and I give the film 4 crash helmets for good stunt work by Bronson and Bud Ekins. I will see you the next time you want to come back to the movies.