Review: Escape From Alcatraz

Based on true events, Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, a hardened con sent to the supposedly inescapable Alcatraz prison. Having already escaped several other prisons, Morris immediately sets about doing the same at The Rock. Patrick McGoohan plays the humourless, vindictive prison warden, Fred Ward plays one of Morris’ fellow would-be escapees, Roberts Blossom and Paul Benjamin play prisoners (the former an avid painter, the latter the prison librarian), and Bruce M. Fischer is the resident prison bully/rapist.

Before Stephen King wrote Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption let alone a film was made of it, director Don Siegel (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “Dirty Harry”) and screenwriter Richard Tuggle (writer-director of one of Clint Eastwood’s worst, “Tightrope”) gave us this quite similar 1979 prison movie. In my view, it’s the far superior film. This film is also based on a book (by J. Campbell Bruce), but also a real-life incident of a prison escape at the supposedly inescapable Alcatraz prison. This is a fairly lean, mean, and rugged film that matches star Clint Eastwood’s own on-screen persona. After all those cop movies and westerns, this might actually be the perfect match of material and Eastwood. He’s perfectly cast. Is it his best film? No, the genre is a well-worn and clichéd one. However, it’s one of the best prison movies and is a very good Clint Eastwood vehicle. This is a very different San Francisco story from director Don Siegel (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “The Beguiled”, “Dirty Harry”), and star Eastwood than “Dirty Harry”.

The opening 7 minutes is excellent, right up until a far too conveniently timed thunderclap on the ‘Welcome to Alcatraz’ line. That was a bit of unnecessary overkill. When I think of the great warden/inmate relationships in prison movies, there’s Burt Lancaster and Karl Malden in “Birdman of Alcatraz”, and Clint Eastwood and Patrick McGoohan in this film. Eastwood is the perfect hard-as-nails prisoner who refuses to be broken and plots to escape. He won’t be broken, he won’t be told what to do, and he’ll escape…or die trying. McGoohan is perfect as the entirely unbending warden of an unbending, seemingly inescapable facility. Dude is ice-cold. The only issue with McGoohan and probably the film itself, is that he’s perhaps not in the film as much as I would’ve liked. The supporting cast here is expert, especially Roberts Blossom and the underrated Paul Benjamin as fellow prisoners. In a film that already has the clichéd prisoner with the pet rodent and the big scary guy looking to rape someone (Bruce M. Fischer), Roberts Blossom provides the obvious inspiration for a certain “Shawshank” character, as the elderly prisoner who likes to paint. Right from his first words you can tell Blossom’s character isn’t in a great frame of mind from the get-go. It’s a really good, haunting performance, and it is to his character that McGoohan’s warden shows just how much of a cruel, petty bastard he is. Benjamin is even better as the wise prison librarian who dispenses advice to Eastwood’s character. As much as Siegel is the credited director here, this really does feel like a Clint Eastwood film. The meticulous planning scenes and the carrying out of the escape attempt is very, very Clint Eastwood ‘The Director’, and also a lot of fun to watch.

More of an irresistibly entertaining yarn than a great film, this is one of the best and most influential prison movies of all-time. Eastwood, McGoohan, Benjamin, and Blossom are all terrific.

Rating: B+