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Escape From Alcatraz
By the numbers
1979
Review: December 15, 2009
Director: Don Siegel
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Roberts Blossom, Paul Benjamin
Nah.
THE SETUP:
Account of prison life and the one successful escape attempt from the famed prison.
DISCUSSION:
I got this for one reason, which is amazingly talented genre director Don Siegel, here working again with Clint Eastwood after Dirty Harry. Plus I recall when this movie was out in theaters, and although I never saw it, I wondered what it was like. At that time, to me, Clint Eastwood was just that total asshole from the Any Which Way… movies, and I could not fathom why anyone would want to see him in anything. And now, after all these years, I’ve seen it! And discovered that it is no big deal.
It’s January, 1960. The movie opens with the boat trip Frank Morris, that’s Eastwood, takes to Alcatraz in the rain. He meets the warden, who lays out some exposition about how no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. We notice that Morris has stolen one of the Warden’s nail clippers—he inexplicably has two.
Morris is eyed by big prisoner Wolf, who thinks he would make for some su-weeeet man-pussy, but Morris punches him in the stomach and jams some soap in his mouth. They both get thrown in “the hole,” a solitary cell with no sunlight, Morris for a week or two, Wolf for much longer. This, by the way, is the last you will ever hear of sex of any kind in this movie, let alone drugs or inter-prison gangs or anything. I guess prisoners were all just sweet upstanding citizens in the early 60s. In here, Morris also meets charming black man English, who lays out exposition about the many reasons it’s impossible to get off the island, then disappears for the majority of the film.
SPOILERS > > >
So there’s this guy in the cell next to Morris who paints. One day the warden inspects his cell, and finds a painting parodying HIM. He suspends the prisoner’s painting privileges, which essentially takes away that prisoner’s reason for living, so he chops off his own fingers in the woodshop in protest. Morris is outraged, as is the tone of the film, which acts as though these guys are enduring unimaginable cruel torments. It’s enough to make you ask yourself: “Wait a minute—aren’t these guys CRIMINALS?” Morris was incarcerated for narcotics and armed robbery, but you’d barely know it from this film, which mentions it once in passing, then proceeds to act as though he was locked away for helping too many blind grandmothers across the street. Also, if you know that your cell is going to be inspected periodically, maybe you should refrain from painting that mocking portrait of the warden? Just a suggestion. Nevertheless, the tone of the film is that these sweet, innocent prisoners, who have never harmed a fly, are enduring unimaginable conditions at the hands of a psychotic despot. The film has this tone—but no evidence to support it, as everything looks pretty keen and orderly and this nice prison where there is no threat of anal sex.
So the first 50 minutes are all about the indignities of prison life, and about then is when Morris discovers that the constant humidity and salt in the air has rendered the cinderblock of the prison soft and porous. He discusses his plans to escape right out in the open at lunch, and soon has three co-conspirators. They all start digging at the little ventilation shafts in their cells. By the way, there’s also a nice old prisoner who’s an old softie for his pet mouse. Maybe that’s why all these guys are in prison—they’re just too soft and sweet for society!
Things proceed. Morris makes a little chisel. He and his co-conspirators [which includes Fred Ward] all order painting kits and supposedly take an interest in painting. But really they are making paper-mache walls and grates to cover the real wall that they’re digging out, and paper-mache heads they can place on their pillows when they’re out of their cells. Soon they’re taking long trips out into the ventilation shafts between their cells and plotting their way out, and about now is when you start to think that the guards of this prison—the highest-level, most escape-proof prison in the country, by the way—are real fucking dolts.
They think nothing of Morris going to sleep early and his clearly fake head sitting there, RIGHT next to the bars. They just barely even look at it. Soon Morris is slipping a fan into his bag RIGHT in front of THREE guards, and they don’t even notice. Nor do they think anything amiss when suddenly there are three guys deciding to go to sleep early, and all at the same time. It would be one thing if the film had built them all up as complacent in their jobs or so friendly with the prisoners that they’ve started being lax, but no. Although as we’ll see, pretty much everyone concerned with this movie was on autopilot.
There are scenes that should be suspenseful, such as when the warden inspects Morris’ cell and looks right at the fake wall, but the movie’s flat tone just continues right through without a blip. Wolf—remember him? The ONE prison rapist in the whole place?—suddenly reappears and just as suddenly vanishes. There’s talk of switching Morris to a different cell the very morning before they’ve plotted their escape for—and then this is dropped and never mentioned again. Then the guys leave their cells with such little fanfare and build-up that it’s halfway through before you realize “Oh, they’re actually escaping now.” The escape goes off seemingly without a hitch, and certainly without ANY attempt to create drama or mood or suspense on the part of the film, and before you know it, the whole thing has ended.
On the beach where the prisoners landed, Morris left a carnation, telling the warden that he escaped and survived. A title informs us that they were never found and that Alcatraz was closed within the year, although I’m not convinced the two events were necessarily cause and effect. In real life is seems that the guys had arranged to be picked up in a boat, although many still feel they must have died, in part because these guys had been career criminals up to that time, and yet were never picked up for any crime after the escape. Maybe they just all went into arts and crafts.
< < < SPOILERS END
There are a few traces of the old Don Siegel, genre director great, but they are few and far between, and for the most part the thing is an interesting story, dully told. Perhaps they were intending to give the whole thing a plodding, workmanlike straightforward momentum, but as it emerges it just has a dull point-A-to-point-B movement and then finally ends. No excitement. No climaxes. No suspense. As I said, you’re halfway into the actual escape before you realize it. I’m going to have to look into it, but this was one of Siegel’s last films, and I have to think that he was fairly checked out, interest and ability-wise, for one reason or another.
What might be interesting for you is that this story was clearly picked to the bones by Stephen King for The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, giving the films of both of those books uncanny similarities. In fact, it’s one of those cases where you can imagine Stephen King reading about the escape and thinking “You know, I could retell this same story, but just make it exciting and add some literary elements.”
Which is exactly what’s missing here… this is just a straightforward telling of the story, with no character development, no real conflict, no third act developments, it just proceeds in a straight line with almost no complications. This may be because the screenplay is written by this guy who had never written a screenplay before and somehow managed to interest Siegel—although it also must be said that no one involved in the film thought it needed additional shaping or character development. So what you end up with is a decent time-passer but nothing near as interesting as it could have been. Ah well.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you’re interested in the story—although you could just read an article—or if you’ve just recently been on a tour of Alcatraz and want to see it in a movie.
