Prison escape movies have long been a staple of cinema. Ranging from Robert Bresson’s minimalist A Man Escaped to the WW2-era A Great Escape, breaking free, evading guards, and managing to stay out offer thrills in spades. The genre speaks to man’s most primal need to live as he pleases, touting the power of the individual – often wrongly imprisoned – over the oppressive state.
But its easy to cut a wire-fence or jump over a wall. Today we are celebrating the most convoluted prison escape movies – featuring unique prison geographies, long drawn-out and elaborate plans, and truly novel ways of running away to freedom. Spanning from prisons in space and at sea to escapes 19 years in the making, and from the Nazi era to dystopian futures, these five movies stretch the bounds of reality in order to celebrate the infinite ingenuity of man (and its almost always a man) against the most secure jails around. Read on to see which films we have chosen. Disagree with our selections? Please let us know what we have missed via the comment section below.
Lockout
How do you escape from a prison that is floating through space? That should be pretty much impossible for anyone to figure out! This is the question that puzzles Scottish brothers Alex (Vincent Regan) and Hydell (Joseph Gilgun) who suddenly take over an entire facility through brute force. Their aim is to start taking hostages, hopefully gaining enough negotiating power for the authorities to send them an escape vessel. With the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) inexplicably holed up alongside them, its up to one man (Guy Pearce) to make sure that she gets out alive.
Produced by Luc Besson, this film – which was ruled by a French court to be a rip-off of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and its sequel Escape from L.A– has no pretences to reality; instead leaning deeply into its fantastical premise. Guy Pearce turns in one of his most sardonic performances here, more concerned with getting off yet another wisecrack than doing the right thing. But he is a classic antihero turned action hero, managing to pursue both his personal aims and what’s right in a deeply satisfying fashion. Under-appreciated in its time, its likely this movie will gain new audiences in the years to come.
Escape Plan
Escape Plan seemed to be designed with one aim in mind: taking the prison escape genre and turning it up to the nth degree. An intentionally ludicrous vehicle that teamed up Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, it takes place in a high-tech, futuristic prison that is supposedly inescapable; although of course, it has its faults, meticulously laid out so we know exactly how the escape is going to go down.
The big reveal that the prison also happens to be on a moving ship in the middle of the ocean is particularly inspired, meant to provoke the viewer into asking themselves: “Just how on earth are they going to get out of here?” But of course they do, and there was even an Escape Plan 2 released five years later and an Escape Plan 3 released one year after that.
The Shawshank Redemption
Some prison escapes take longer than others. Take the case of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who spends over 19 years methodically digging a hole to freedom. Covering the hole with a poster of Rita Hayworth, her relaxed posture is a perfect symbol of his desire for freedom. Number one in the IMDB Top 250 for a reason, The Shawshank Redemption offers the most realistic way to get out of prison on the list, yet its still a complicated and fascinating procedure.
What makes the escape so satisfying is the way he has used his position in the prison working in the prison library to launder money in order to make sure that he is set up for life. This is especially true when you consider the calm and thoughtful way the film is made, with many quiet conversations about the nature of freedom and what it means to live a meaningful life, creating a beautiful reverie on the allure of escape itself.
Escape to Victory
In prison it’s important to maintain exercise. This is especially true for the heroes of Escape to Victory, who use a big football game as a means to execute their escape from a Nazi POW camp. This John Huston film, with an all-star cast of a young Sylvester Stallone (making his second appearance here), Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and, yes, Pelé himself, sees them agreeing to play the Germans as part of an Axis propaganda stunt.
It’s based on the true account of Dynamo Kiev playing the German troops in a series of games, managing to win every single one of them. In Escape To Victory, after the Allies establish contact with the French resistance, they devise a plan to escape from the changing rooms. This only comes after a barnstorming football game, which actually looks like real people playing for once thanks to the casting of footballers such as Booby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles, Kazimierz Deyna, Paul Van Himst, Mike Summerbee and more.
Cube
Made years before concept escape horrors such as Saw and Circle, Cube is a true masterpiece of design. Created with help of mathematician David W. Pravica, it tells the story of six strangers stuck in an elaborate contraption made completely of interlocking cubes. When they try to move across they realise that some rooms contain traps, making their escape incredibly complicated.
This film was made by nerds for nerds, the prisoners trying to solve the puzzle through mathematical reasoning. Moving with endless twists and turns, as well as a whole load of philosophising about the nature of their strange imprisonment, and Cube is one of the most unique prison escape films of all time. While receiving mixed reviews upon its release, the independent Canadian film has grown to be a true cult classic. Check out its two sequels, Cube 2: Hypercube and Cube Zero, for more mathematical based-hijinks.
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