Wordiezett So much average

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

L P The Mckenzie Break' ('TMB' 1970)--a somewhat overlooked film in the WWII POW genre--is a dynamic & well paced production that has been digitally transferred (DVD; currently lacks Blu-ray/HD, as of 12/13) in remarkably good condition. 'TMB' is recommended for only the die-hard fans of the POW genre & perhaps the curious WWII genre viewer. Another alternative film in the mold of 'TMB', as well as, 'Stalag 17' (1963), 'The Great Escape'(1963), 'Hart's War' (2002), 'Empire of the Sun' (1987), 'The Hill' (1965), 'Blood Oath' (or 'Prisoners of the Sun', 1990), 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' (1957), 'King Rat' (1965), & 'Victory' (1981), is 'The Good War' (2004) with Roy Scheider & Luca Zingaretti, and written & directed by Giorgio Serafini, pales slightly in comparison, but offers another view of an Axis POW camp in the US (Texas). For similar themes also consider: 'The Colditz Story' (1955); 'Escape to Athena' (1979); 'So weit die Fusse tragen' (TV 1959); 'Paradise Road' (1997). Also consider: 'What Did You Do During the War Daddy' (1966); 'Empire of the Sun' (1987); 'Ivan, Marie og verdenshistorien' (1992); 'Victory' (1981); 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence' (1983); 'POW' (TV, 2003); 'As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me' (2003); 'The Secret of Blood Island' (1964); 'The Great Raid' (2005); 'Von Ryan's Express' (1965); & 'Andersonville' (1996).

ProperCharlie When a sub-genre is established in the wonderfully diverse cosmology of film, you can bet that someone in this post-modern, media savvy world will add to it. Only they'll have knowing winks to the audience when the usual hoops are jumped through or they'll play with those expectations and pull the rug out from under you by subverting them and twisting the plot. We all know the score, they know we know, we know they know we know ad infinitum, or more often, nauseam. It comes as a surprise to me that someone was at this in 1970 with a humble POW movie.The inmates are tunnelling out. Dummies in for escapees at roll call, check. Uniforms manufactured in camp, check. Tunnel cave-in during the escape, check. It's not all by the numbers though. We have a vaulting horse. No tunnel mouth there though as you can see right under it. Good topsoil on the turnip patch, but that's not where they're hiding the spoil. That this is a British POW camp the those escaping are German prisoners is unusual and welcome. Maybe the biggest twist of all is that the whole escape has been rumbled by the authorities, but they let them escape in order to net a bigger prize.OK, it's not as knowing as anything since 1994, but it does play with the genre well, albeit a little ham-fistedly at time. Underneath the genre trappings there's a good little drama with a central duel between an Irish Captain in British Intelligence and the U-Boat Commander commanding officer in camp. Both are willing to bend and break the rules in pursuit of their aims. One of them will even kill to achieve his aims. Both are highly flawed individuals. Both are self-centred and neither of them succeed. From a simple set up at the start, the film reaches a fresh and unexpected conclusion to give a true stand-out film.There are some clumsy cuts and overlays to demonstrate simultaneous actions in various locations as the escape progresses that really don't work and the drive of the second half of the film falls flat. The feuds within the camp, both that between captors and captives and between the Luftwaffe and the Submariners, are edgy. The tension created evaporates as soon as the escapees are out of the camp. It all gets a little clunky. However, overall this is a good film and definitely one to watch if you like your post-modernism freshly minted from the 70s.

Robert D. Ruplenas I'm always interested to see neglected movies that appear to have good credentials, but in this case the film's neglect appears justified. Evidently based on some actual incidents during WWII, the film just doesn't connect with the viewer for some reason that it is not quite clear to me. One very likely reason is that - in the print I saw on TCM, anyway - none of the scenes where the Germans talked among themselves were given titles. This interesting directorial concept - to let the non-German speaking viewer just guess from "context" what the Germans are saying to each other - is, in my book, an utter flop and helps to lock the viewer out. Also, the way the movie begins - just dropping us into a very confused situation without much setup - is disorienting. Brian Keith is pretty good here, but the reputations of "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17" will not be challenged by this flick.

Alice Liddel 'The McKenzie Break' is very much in the tradition of the POW movie that seemingly dominated British screens in the 1950s. There is the same elaborate tunnelling; the same stand-off between Brit and Nazi, prisoner and commandant; an introduction of a theatrical scene to emphasise the idea of role-playing to deceive one's enemy. There is the same pitting a maverick officer against his staid, by-the-book superior. There is the tense, suspenseful escape scene, and a rejection of easy, American-style heroics. Character is reduced to short-hand. Despite the greater mobility and fluidity of the camerawork, making certain scenes very vivid, the film's violence belongs more to the 1950s than the blood-soaked era of Peckinpah and Penn; and there is absolutely no swearing, even in those more permissive times. The whole film has that admirably dour emphasis on the literal mechanics of plot - of getting the job done - which is unglamorous, but has an integrity that gives you an illusion of realism, and makes the lollipops of escape, suspense or action all the more satisfying.So with the exception of colour, there is very little difference between 'Break' and all those 1950s films invariably starring John Mills and Richards Attenborough and Todd. It even begins with a time-honoured shot, a god's eye view of the camp from the surveilling post, emphasising the see-all power of the confining power. Of course, this surveillance has only access to the surface of things; the escape route is under ground. This is also a metaphor for the game of wits, between the Germans and their respective captors, Major Parry and Captain Conner. Parry, like his sentry, can only see the surface of things, and hence his impasse, symptomatic, as he admits, of his general mediocrity. Conner's job is to look behind the surface: as a crime reporter he is used to infiltrating the underworld; now he must literally search under this world of the first shot. Conner's former job gives the film the air of a transposed policier, with the wily old Inspector trying to nab a fiendishly clever criminal. This point is brought out by the decoy use of police made by the prisoners in the escape.There are a couple of incidental, non-structural changes to the old format that completely revolutionise it. The prisoners are German. Further, they are not sympathetic, non-Nazi Germans as in 'Das Boot', but the kind of glassy fanatics with no compunction in slitting an honourable colleague's neck. And yet they are subversive, attempting to overthrow an established order - the opening scene where they group like striking workers and tackle the soldiers regrouping like shielded police, that must have had an ironic frisson only two years after 1968. In the 1950s POW movies, there was never any attempt to make the soldiers likable - they were tough professionals doing their job; the fact of their Britishness and the shared experience of the war gave the audience the involvement and emotion absent from the films themselves. Narrative logic suggests that we will be on the side of the prisoners, the people who are trying to provoke action - the essence of film - not contain it. And when they do break out there is a sense of excitement, a gush of fresh air (AND surrealism, a small army of disguised Nazis driving through a sleepy Scottish town). But these are Nazis. Rarely has personal morality and narrative demands clashed so disturbingly, in so downbeat a fashion.Further, this typical British movie marginalises the British. The one major figure - played by England's most underrated supporting player, Ian Hendry - is decent enough, but practically useless. The film is a game of chess between a Nazi and an undisciplined Irishman with little gra for order, justice or the English, just a gambling man's love of impossible odds. Maybe it's some hidden patriotism on my part, but Brian Keith is a wonder, a drunken Irishman who seems to be the only one able to establish order, but actually (deliberately?) creates chaos. Seeing as the Irish spent the war in inglorious neutrality, and the IRA supported the Germans, you wonder what exactly the very Irish (and not Anglo-Irish, despite the Trinity College interiors) Conner's motives are - as his German rival says, the Brits have been murdering his ancestors for centuries. It is surely no accident that it was Ireland and Germany who, through a long struggle for Independence, and two World Wars, effectively destroyed the British Empire, hence their superimposition at the end. England may have won the battle...This seems to me the true subject of this excellent film.