Movie Review: Escape from Alcatraz

Pity Hollywood doesn't make movies like these any more. I am an incurable admirer of the Old: movies, music, and books.

Escape from Alcatraz is a classic on the lines of Guns of Navarone, a gripping drama based on a (non-fiction) book of the same name by Campbell Bruce. The plot is anyone's guess: the successful escape of three convicts from the infamous prison at the Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. Among others, the prison was made famous for housing such legendary criminals as Al Capone and "Birdman" Stroud.

Filmed on location, Escape keeps you successfully riveted to the screen till the finish. No detail is minor; every inch of the escape's modus operandi shown is realistic. There's no gun-roaring and bomb-hurling action in the entire movie. Although heavy on dialogues--even those are sparse in a movie running close to 2 hours--it is the carefully-created mood that holds you. The location, architecture and security elements of the prison are shown as part of the overall action instead of in one separate scene. After about 30 minutes have elapsed the viewer is convinced that escape is impossible.

Which is exactly the premise of the movie: that three men dared to do the impossible. In the words of the warden played by Patrick McGoohan:

Alcatraz was built to keep all the rotten eggs in one basket, and I was specially chosen to make sure that the stink from the basket does not escape. Since I've been warden, a few people have tried to escape. Most of them have been recaptured; those that haven't have been killed or drowned in the Bay. No one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. And no one ever will!

Directed by one of Clint Eastwood's mentors Don Siegel, Escape from Alcatraz also focuses on characterization. From a gentle old convict who becomes an unfortunate victim of the chilling warden to the frustrated black convict, the film gives us some marvellous interplay of emotion. You do find yourself taking the bad guys' side but it's not always so. From the jailers' perspective, it is not an easy task to keep your sanity working for years in a paranoid atmosphere. The scene the old painter chops his own fingers off portrays this very well.

Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris gives one of his most controlled performances as does Patrick McGoohan who doesn't hide his quiet cruelty. Director Don Siegel's technique is another highlight of the film: he transports the viewer from passive viewing to directly experiencing the claustrophobia, the sense of freedom crushed, and the agony of being caged in isolation. One really feels liberated in scenes showing prisoners playing baseball, music, or generally relaxing in sunlight. The treacherous location of Alcatraz is itself is shown in what seems to be fleeting scenes.

On the whole, great cinema for one to watch in these days where the most creative Hollywood product doesn't seem to go beyond Basic Instinct II.

Postscript: The Alcatraz penitentiary was closed in 1963 because it proved expensive to maintain.