“Escape from Alcatraz” Movie Review

 

“Escape from Alcatraz”

 

Movie Review

 

Escape from Alcatraz, directed by Don Siegel, is a 1979 American prison thriller film. It is an adaptation of J. Campbell Bruce's 1963 non-fiction book of the same name, and it dramatizes the 1962 prisoner escape from Alcatraz Island's maximum security prison. Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin starred in the film. This was Danny Glover's first film. Escape from Alcatraz is Siegel and Eastwood's fifth and final collaboration.

 

Frank Morris, an exceptionally intelligent criminal who has escaped from other facilities, arrives at Alcatraz Island's maximum security prison in early 1960. The Warden informs him curtly that Alcatraz is unique among US prisons for its extremely high level of security and that no inmate has ever successfully escaped. Morris steals one of the nail clippers on the desk during the conversation.

Morris befriends a few inmates over the next few days, including the eccentric Litmus, who enjoys desserts; English, a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defense; and the elderly Doc, who paints portraits and once grew chrysanthemums at Alcatraz. Morris also makes an enemy of Wolf, a rapist who harasses him in the showers and later attacks him with a knife in the prison yard. Both men are imprisoned in the hole in isolation.

Morris is released, but Wolf remains. Doc has painted a portrait of the Warden and other guards on the island, which the Warden discovers. He takes away Doc's painting privileges forever merely to be mean, despite the paintings being respectful and flattering likenesses. Doc is depressed, and before being led away, he hacks off several fingers on his left hand with a hatchet from the prison workshop.

 

Morris later runs into two bank robbers and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, who are old friends from another prison sentence, and he joins forces with prisoner Charley Butts. Morris notices that the concrete around the grille in his cell is weak and can be chipped away, which leads to the development of an escape strategy. Over the next few months, Morris, the Anglins, and Butts will dig through the walls of their cells with spoons soldered into makeshift shovels, create papier-mache decoys, and build a raft out of raincoats.

 

During dinner, Morris places a chrysanthemum on the table in honor of Doc, but the Warden comes by and crushes it, causing a heart attack in a provoked and angry Litmus. Morris' cell is inspected by the Warden, who finds nothing unusual. Nonetheless, he directs that Morris be transferred to a different cell as soon as possible. Wolf has been released from solitary confinement and is planning another attack on Morris, but English is able to stop him, implying that his gang will beat up Wolf.

 

The inmates decide that night that they are ready to leave. Morris, the Anglins, and the Butts intend to escape together through the passageway. Butts loses his nerve and fails to meet them. He later changes his mind, but it is too late, and he returns to his cell, whining about his missed opportunity.

Morris and the Anglins access the roof while carrying the flotation gear and avoiding the searchlights. They scale the building's side into the prison yard, climb over a barbed-wire fence, and make their way to the island's shoreline, where they inflate the raft. The three men leave Alcatraz partially submerged in water, clinging to the raft and propelling themselves primarily with their legs.

The next morning, the escape is discovered, and a massive manhunt is launched. Shreds of raincoat material, including the men's personal effects, are discovered floating in the bay. While searching on Angel Island, the Warden insists that the men's personal effects were vital and that the men would have drowned rather than leave them behind. A guard believes the convicts got rid of them by claiming they drowned. The Warden's aide informs him that he has been summoned to Washington to face his superiors, with the possibility of being forced to accept early retirement or termination of his duties for failing to prevent the breakout. He discovers a chrysanthemum on a rock and is informed by the aide that none grows on Angel Island. The fugitives were never apprehended, and Alcatraz was closed less than a year later.

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