San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.
What Mr. Siegel has made is fiction, a first-rate action movie that is about the need and the decision to take action, as well as the action itself.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
fresh:
It's one of those very difficult exercises in which large emotions, like the compulsion to be free, are reflected in minute actions, like the chipping away at stone with a pocket nail clipper.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Oct 2004
fresh:
It's an austere depiction of the tedious routines of prison life, and of the courage and strength of spirit needed in coping with unpleasant warders, tough fellow-inmates, and a life sentence.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
26 Jan 2006
fresh:
Escape from Alcatraz is relentless in establishing a mood and pace of unrelieved tension.