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A different way of telling a story

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

In a WWII POW camp, an allied prisoner attempting escape is met with bullets. Capt. Robert Hatch (Sylvester Stallone) presents a naked plan to the escape committee. English Captain John Colby (Michael Caine) is one of the prisoners and a former professional footballer for West Ham United. Maj. Karl von Steiner (Max von Sydow) challenges him to a game. Colby accepts the challenge and starts building a team but he rejects any escape attempts. He doesn't want to get his men killed and would rather wait for the war's end. Hatch is desperate to escape and Colby reluctantly allows him to join. The Germans see the propaganda potential and set the game in Paris. Real football players are included in the movie starting with Pelé.It's a rather standard POW film. The actors are solid. Stallone does not embarrass himself as the brash American. There is no equal to Max von Sydow. John Huston is doing yeoman's work but not much more. The soccer stars would be appealing to fans but I don't recognize anybody other than Pelé. I'm surprised at his natural charisma coming through the screen. He's very effective at being Pelé. Tension isn't that high. The main problem could be the Nazis. The movie needs scary Nazis to elevate the intensity and they don't mistreat their prisoners enough. As for the soccer game, I'm sure it's appealing to see these great athletes on the pitch and the bicycle kick is beautiful but it has no drama. The drama is the escape and therefore, the score is actually meaningless. The game has no rooting value. The only way to make it meaningful is to play it in Berlin in front of Hitler with no chance of escape. The stakes becomes pride but the stakes here is escape. Overall, it's not boring but it could be better. I like the final escape which has a fun element. However, it is yet another example of the lack of ruthlessness by the Nazis.

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* Having read some of the other reviews on here, it is clear that a few people may not have watched this film properly or simply fail to understand its premise.It is not an historical drama, but an attempt to combine two "boy's own" stories - in short, an exercise in enjoyment. If you read Commando war comics as a kid, you will surely enjoy this film as I did, and if you are a football fan, just double that. Given that most of the then Ipswich Town squad were on show and featured on both sides - including "German" goalkeeper Laurie Sivell - I loved Escape to Victory from the time I first saw it in the early 1980s.Some of the reviews here are simplistic and seem to suggest that the POW camp was full of star footballers. Not so. Steiner's (Max von Sydow's) initial idea is to have Colby's (Michael Caine's) guys knocking the ball about in the yard take on a local Wehrmacht team, but after being turned into a propaganda exercise the entire camp system is scoured for footballers - including the work camps in Eastern Europe which presents one of the more worthy moments in this otherwise light-hearted romp.The senior camp officers are against the game being played, but Colby pushes for it for the sake of the Eastern Europeans, who would otherwise just be sent back to the hard labour camps.The escape of Hatch (Sylvester Stallone) is an interesting sub-plot and his speaking French is comedy gold, and the paunchy Michael Caine does cut a strange figure as the team captain. As for his age however, it was not uncommon for players back then to be playing well into late thirties and early forties. Stanley Matthews played top level football until retiring at the age of forty-six.As for the match itself, it is well put together for its time. Of course, we are not going to see a 2-0 win for the Germans here, and rather than scoff at the Allies coming back from 4-1 down it would be best just to enjoy it and revel in Stallone's attempts to emulate Gordon Banks - "where do I stand for a corner kick?" Pele's overhead kick is overcooked, yes - but this moment stirs Steiner to applaud, signifying that his love of the game of football is powerful enough to overcome his position as a German officer. His standing up to applaud has been cited by some reviewers here as strange, but in the context of the film it is realistic. His being a Wehrmacht officer is forgotten, at that moment he is simply a football fan.Yes, the escape and crowd scene is cringeworthy. Big collars and bigger hair, flared trousers and the complete ignorance of the fact that the players would have been lugging themselves around in heavy football boots. But hey, just enjoy it for what it is.Some more earnest reviewers have pulled up the fact that the players would have escaped at half-time, and yes - this is probably what most people would have done. But had that been the case, we would not have had the comeback to beat Liverpool's feat against Milan in 2005. In any case, Pelé clearly wins the day with his negotiating skills.As for Pelé even being there, there were plenty of black Allied soldiers in German POW camps, and contrary to popular myth they were treated equally by the guards and not shipped off elsewhere. Some non-white soldiers, such as Indians opposed to the British empire, were even persuaded to fight for the Germans. Pelé is portrayed as a Jamaican corporal in the film, which doesn't stretch the boundaries that much.In all, this film remains enjoyable now just as it was more than thirty years ago, in an era when Ipswich Town were pushing for the treble.

Escape to Victory is really a far out film trying to be a kind of movie they do not make anymore with a casting that requires some stretch of the imagination.Taking its inspiration from The Great Escape the film is set in a World War 2 prison camp. Michael Caine plays an ex England football international who receives a proposition from Max Von Sydow, a Nazi officer and a former German footballer for match against the POWs and the German Officers.Sylvester Stallone who takes on the Steve McQueen type role is the goalkeeper of the team and although some of the Allied officers think that the game will be a German propaganda victory they also see this as an opportunity to organise an escape.Film legend John Huston directed this film with some old fashion war spirit and he assembles a cast that not only sees Stallone and Caine but famous footballers such as Pele, Bobby Moore and some current soccer players of the era such as Ossie Ardiles.Its football, its escape from a prison camp, its a little bit of Rocky with music from Bill Conti and its a lot of fun, simply because you know you will never watch a film like this again.Film critics sharpened their knives when this film was released but years later its still very enjoyable hokum.

The story is one of the unique tales to be based on World War II, The basic premise departs from the love of the game of football in both the sides of Allies and Axis, despite there's a war between them. The added weight of having the Nazi will be very tempted to use the game as a great propaganda against the rest of the world and the Allied POW will be tempted to use the game as a cover to escape makes the story more interesting. However, the story develops rather unpredictably weird, having Hatch willing to go back inside to convey the info to Colby, and having the mob rush in without the Nazi shooting a single bullet. There's also all the little hiccups here and there such as the alarm didn't sound when the light hit Hatch's face when he's escaping, and also the football game rather played stupidly despite being designed by Pele. The acting is surely an average one, despite the big names of Stallone, Caine, and Von Sydow here. From all the roles, I only see Michael Caine delivers a quite convincing acting, although is also refuted by the sheer weirdness of how the story unfolds.