IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

ma-cortes Awesome , tense warlike movie with memorable images and outstanding acting by some well-known faces . This is a splendid film that succeeds largely because of particularly nice interpretations , it deals with a daring breakout from inescapable Scottish concentration camp carried out by Nazi officers incarnated by a good star cast and magnificently realized by Lamont Johnson . It's partially based on facts adapted by William Norton from a bestselling written by Sidney Shelley titled ¨The Bowmanville break¨ . The continuous escapes have caused the British staff ordered 'putting all the rotten eggs in one basket' as the officer prisoners are reunited into a special concentration camp called McKenzie , being commanded by a hard-drinking Major Perry (Ian Hendry) who efforts to stifle riots of the wily Nazis . Irish Intelligence captain named Connor (Brian Keith) , a special troubleshooter , is sent by General Kerr (Jack Watson ) to Scotland for resolving conflicts in the problematic camp . Connor suspects astute captain Schlueter (Helmut Griem) of being the mastermind behind the scheme about a mass escape and he is supposed to stop the action . It deals with hard preparatives of a diverse group formed by Doenitz's U-boat officers and Luffwaffe air officers and soldiers mounting a dangerous getaway from a barbed-wired and strongly controlled camp . The most part of the film concerns on the elaborated process of secretly digging an underground tunnel and the last one deals with spectacular breakout and effort the approx. twenty and some escaped prisoners throughout Scotland trying to make their bid to freedom .This exciting story contains thrills, intrigue, tension, excitement galore, entertainment and lots of fun . Suspenseful WWII drama about a concentration camp from a German point of sight , it packs exceptional plethora of prestigious actors as British as German incarnating the motley group of POWs , all of them giving good acting and support , as Helmut Griem as U-boat Squadron leader who plans the massive breakout as Ian Hendry as serious Major and of course a sensational Brian Keith whose character , an arrogant Intelligence officer is sent to foil the getaway attempts . The picture belongs to a genre that has given classics as ¨The great escape¨, ¨Stalag 17¨, ¨Escape from Colditz¨, ¨Escape from Sorbibor¨ and many others . Colorful, atmospheric cinematography by Michael Reed , Hammer Production's usual ; it is shot in Ardmore Studios, Herbert Road, Bray, County Wicklow,Ireland ,Santa Monica, California, USA ,Turkey and photography being perfectly remastered . Excellent production design and art direction with evocative sets from concentration camp and barbwire . Rousing and lively soundtrack by Riz Ortalani . This well executed motion picture is well directed by Lamont Johnson . Rating : Two thumbs up , essential and indispensable watching , a real must see for its strong characterizations and interesting issues .

moonspinner55 Brian Keith is well-cast as an Irish-born Army Captain with the British forces during WWII who is penalized for some indiscretions and busted down to Intelligence Officer at a prisoner-of-war camp in Scotland; the German inmates there take their orders from a megalomaniac Nazi Kapitänleutnant, who is supervising the digging of a tunnel underneath the barracks to freedom. Although ultimately let down by the lax editing and the careful if plodding pace, this is a well-realized vision of wartime behind barbed wire. The picture runs too long and has some beleaguered plot-threads (such as the sacrificial homosexual), though the match of wits between adept, assured Keith and smug, shrewd Helmut Griem is riveting. The locations (via Ireland and Turkey) give the film a vivid and unique look, and screenwriter William Norton's dialogue is extraordinarily direct. The finale is somewhat dragged out (and far-fetched in the bargain), yet it provides for a satisfying, sardonic close. **1/2 from ****

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.

Renaldo Matlin An irish intelligence officer (Keith) has been given the unwanted task of figuring out what is going on in a british P.O.W. camp for german officers. He suspects the captives, under command of a submarine captain (Griem) are planning a major prison break, and during his investigation has several confrontations with his german counterpart. Brian Keith gives us one of his best performances opposite Helmut Griem (also memorable) in this suspenseful and highly original World War II drama. If you enjoy realistic war movies that doesn't deal with "guys on an impossible mission", you should love the underrated McKENZIE BREAK.