The Great Escape II: The Untold Story

As a thriller, I have seen worse in television. Escape suspense was so-so, postwar plot not that much, albeit interesting in the portrayal of the protection granted to nazi criminals in exploiting them as assets for the cold war. Acring, as expected of the cast was simply hineous, with the probable exception of Donald Pleasance and even his talent was botched by an amateurish direction job. About the factual content, I cannot judge, knowing barely nothing about it but what was presented by the original film but even if the miniseries were accurate, the depiction ruins the story. Watchable if you found it for free and have nothing else to invest your time in.

The Americans always need to have their presence in these Hollywood movies whether they were there or not.. there were not any Americans involved in the actual escape.. all the Americans were moved out if the camp the night before the escape... there were Canadians involved in the escape however.. as for this TV movie and its quality I thought it was really poorly portrayed.

I only saw this silly made-for-TV sequel in it's chopped-down 93-minute video version, and it was quite obvious that there were many things missing. On the plus side, I didn't care.

Where THE GREAT ESCAPE was a somewhat-fictionalized version of a true story, GE2 is a fictional story which only touches reality at odd points (and sometimes the oddest: the part about recognizing some Gestapo officers from a painting in a nightclub is true).

The real story of the investigation of the Stalag Luft III murders would probably have been a lot more interesting, but there might not have been a part in that for Christopher Reeve.

Bad acting and even worse story line. Where did all the American come from ???. The American had nothing to do with the Great Escape and definitely nothing to do with the investigation at the end of the war. Then when did Hollywood ever let the truth get in the way of a (not so) good story.

After one large movie and this made-for-TV version, why can't someone stop messing around with the true story of the "Great Escape" and present it as it actually happened. The ending also fails to make clear that there were 2 UK-mounted war crimes trials of the murderers of the 50 escapees. Also Burchardt in real life was sentenced to death by hanging at the 2nd trial, but was reprieved. There are loads of other changes from the real events, but then Hollywood and the film industry has rarely cared about accuracy.