The Great Escape II: The Untold Story

After watching this film I am waiting for a remake of Waterloo showing how the Americans beat Napoleon. That is just as fanciful as this ridiculous film. There is no attempt at vermisilitude..It goes beyond embarassment and an insult to the brave men who were murdered.

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.

It's a passable movie if you don't mind a fictionalized version of real wartime events. The idea is there so at least you get the point that it's trying to make. It might not be 8 out of 10 stars but at least it's better than the majority of the Hollywood garbage that's out there these days. I enjoy looking back into these older films and finding gems. I wish this one was a little bit more polished. The one thing that really stuck with me was the idiotic music score that played. This is a serious film with a serious subject matter but they played this music as of it was a joke of some sort. Just by that one gesture the film loses two extra stars from me.

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.