Watch Escape from Alcatraz For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

How sad is this?

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"Escape from Alcatraz" was the last time Clint Eastwood worked with Don Siegel after a gap of 8 years. Most of the cast aren't very well known except for Patrick McGoohan, who is outstanding as the cold and austere prison governor. He and Clint Eastwood make for an excellent combination in the scenes they share. If McGoohan was hoping to intimidate Eastwood, it wasn't working! The low key approach works best for this film. The whole thing is very good, with a suitably ambiguous ending.Don Siegel's direction is amongst his best.

It's 1960 San Francisco. Bank robber Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) has tried too many escapes and is brought to Alcatraz where no one has ever escaped from. He befriends Litmus with his mouse and becomes Wolf's enemy. English (Paul Benjamin) runs the library. It turns out that English is the top among the blacks. Charley Butts moves into the next cell. Brothers Clarence Anglin and John Anglin (Fred Ward) join Frank in Alcatraz after a failed escape.It's a nice prison movie with all the horrors that entails and an escape scheme. It's a bit slow and lacks a truly scary opponent. The warden is nothing special. Patrick McGoohan doesn't have enough threatening presence. Wolf is too soft and goes away for much of the movie. I wish more is done with the antagonists of the movie. Nevertheless, it's a good escape movie. Clint is at the top of his game.

"Escape From Alcatraz" (1979) was a decent flick; I'd give it a 7 out of 10. (And, yeah, I do know I'm going to get nailed to the wall by my film buff friends who no doubt can point out reasons why it would deserve a higher rating. This is why I hide behind an internet connection with these reviews.)Clint Eastwood really is a wonderful actor, and there are nice amounts of tension here. I personally think the best actor was Roberts Blossom as "Doc." I was also pretty surprised to discover just how much "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) borrowed from this – right down to an elderly, eccentric prisoner nurturing a pet and dying tragically.To me, the movie seemed a little thin. Of the four protagonists, the only one we really get to know is "Butts," and two others are convenient Italian American stereotypes. Little was done to exploit Patrick McGoohan's amazing acting skills as the warden. (This was the guy who played Longshanks in "Braveheart" (1995)!!)It also seems thinly plotted. Little transpires beyond four prisoners gathering small objects to effect their escape. And if you've already read about the true story of Frank Norris, there are no surprises here. Finally, we do not even fully see the aftermath of the story for the one unfortunate conspirator.This movie also might suffer from … "genre fatigue?" Yes, it's regarded as a classic, but, since 1979, we've seen fictional film prisons do more with this kind of setting. One, of course, is the obviously inspired "Shawshank." Another is HBO's "Oz." I just don't think this movie would thrill a modern audience the way it did in 1979.http://ericrobertnolan.wordpress.com/

At the end of the film I thought 'is that it?' I couldn't believe I'd sat through the entire film to find out that was the ending.I understand that the film was based on a true story however with it being a film I expected some sort of drama and climax. The first 1 hour of the film was a complete waste of time - I found myself falling asleep and that never happens when I watch a film! You barely find out anything about the characters... Therefore, I felt no real connection to anyone I didn't really care whether they left or not.Nothing dramatic happened in the film and the thing just went from one scene to another with very little happening. Just when you thought they'd be a climax - there wasn't.