Escape from Alcatraz (1979, USA)

Shortly after the death of Patrick McGoohan, I threw a few of his films I hadn’t yet seen on my queue, including Scanners and Escape from Alcatraz. It’s so strange to see McGoohan play figures of authority, as he does in both films (and in his most American-recognized role, Longshanks in Braveheart). I’m so accustomed to McGoohan as No. 6 in The Prisoner that it wigs me out a bit to see him as a king, a doctor, or a prison warden. He’s only got about four scenes in Alcatraz, but they’re doozies of self-control and barely repressed rage. He made an excellent stoic-on-stoic match with Clint Eastwood, which is not something you can say of many actors.

In any case . . . the escape. Don Siegel made a tight, smart prison movie, one that has obvious influence on many con movies and television shows of the last thirty years. Eastwood plays Frank Morris, an escape artist and heist man shipped off to Alcatraz, the supposedly unbreakable prison in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. From there, it’s pretty self-explanatory – it is called Escape from Alcatraz - but Siegel sets the stage perfectly, and Eastwood is well-matched by his co-stars, including Fred Ward, Paul Benjamin, and Larry Hankin. (Carl from Billy Madison. I KNOW.) In short, it’s a terrific genre movie, and McGoohan will be sorely missed.