The Great Escape - Double Disc Special Edition - Extra's reviewed (The Great Escape (DVD))

Member Name: Alan1968

Product:	The Great Escape (DVD)
Date:	12/07/05 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some interesting additional material and documaentaries

Disadvantages: None Really

The Great Escape is a classic 1963 film directed by John Sturges, with an impressive cast list, including Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and stalwarts of the British Acting community such as Richard Attenborough and Gordon Jackson, along with Angus Lennie who went on from sharing the cooler with McQueen to become Shughie the chef in Crossroads for many years.

As I doubt many people are unaware of this film as it has been a stalwart of the TV schedules for as long as I can remember it is not my intention to review the film in detail but rather to discuss the additional features available on this two disk special edition.

Disk One

This contains first and foremost the film itself where you can relive the exploits of the digging of Tom, Dick and Harry, the forging and scrounging, the camp break out, McQueen’s bike chase sequence et al to your hearts content. This first disk also contains an Audio commentary with cast and crew. This is one of those features that either appeals to you or it doesn’t. In my case it doesn’t, to me it is just basically a bunch of people talking over the film you are trying to watch. If however you do like this sort of extra it does appear to be very well done covering the entirety of the film.

Slightly more to my taste is the Trivia Track, this I found highly entertaining and for the Great Escape buffs out there will be a lot of fun. Essentially you can watch the film while a series of green boxes appear containing various pieces of trivia appear. On the whole these are relevant to the scene in question involving details of set, storyline, cast or crew. Unlike the Audio Commentary I found this extra really enjoyable and whilst I did tire of the reading eventually I have watched the film in this format a couple of time just to take in all the trivia.

Disk Two

The second disk contains the extra features, this is comprised mainly of 3 documentaries. The first entitled The Great Escape: The Untold Story has in the passed been shown on terrestrial television. This is a reasonably interesting documentary comprising interviews with escapee Jimmy Jones, camp forger Alex Cassie, who had declined the opportunity to join the escape and the sister of one of the murdered escapees. These interviews are interspersed with reconstructions of of parts of the escape bid and the post war criminal investigation into the murders that led to the execution of 13 Gestapo Officers and prison sentences for others. An additional 10 minutes of interviews, which were obviously cut from the finished documentary, are also included.

The second documentary is The Great Escape: Heroes Underground, which is about the making of the film with some interesting facts about the creation of composite characters and the decision to include Americans as escapees for the film despite the fact they had been moved to a different camp by the time of the escape. Annoyingly from my point of view is the fact that this documentary has been split into 7 parts despite only lasting about 45mins in total.

The final documentary is entitled The Real Virgil Hilts and concerns the story of American airman David Jones who the director John Sturges had described as the inspiration for the Steve McQueen character. This is an interesting enough documentary of the sort normally seen on the history channel, which includes interviews with Jones and follows his life from the cavalry through flight school, to being part of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, his subsequent capture and imprisonment by the Nazis to his post war career which ended at Nasa as part of the Apollo projects.

In addition to these documentaries the second disk also includes the original theatrical trailer and a file of still photographs from the making of the film. These are for the real Great Escape buffs and held little interest for me.

Overall

As this Special Edition DVD is currently available from Play.com at £6.99 I would certainly it consider worthwhile if you are looking to add The Great Escape to your DVD collection or to purchase the film for the fan in your family (there is always at least one). The documentaries are interesting, especially for those with an interest in history, and not overly long and the trivia track is one of the most enjoyable special features I have encountered for a while enjoyable.

Summary: Buy the Special Edition DVD and have fun with the trivia track