Back in the glorious 1970's, the prison escape movies were enormously popular, and since there exist a couple of major milestones (like "Escape from Alcatraz" and "Midnight Express" for example), it's quite normal that smaller and more modestly produced titles like this "Breakout" are relatively unknown and almost forgotten. This isn't entirely unjustified, because "Breakout" is an overall mundane and straightforward action movie without a distinct style or exceptionally memorable aspects. It's a fun enough movie to pass an hour and a half of your time with, but it certainly doesn't rank amongst the better 70's action/adventure outings or even amongst Charlie Bronson's highlights of that period. Nonetheless, "Breakout" has quite a number of elements in common with the aforementioned success movies and actually could have been a lot bigger. The story is (loosely) based on true events, the film benefices from an excellent supportive cast and the ideally raw US/Mexican border setting. Still, the story itself is rather common (most unfortunate for the people involved, of course, but nothing extraordinary) and mostly due to Tom Gries' uninspired direction, the terrific cast and settings are underused. In fact, the only truly remarkable thing about "Breakout" is that Charles Bronson depicts an unusually extrovert and eloquent protagonist. The Bronson we all know and love, from classics like "Mr. Majestyk" and "The Mechanic" for instance, is a very silent and solitary outsider, whereas his character Nick Colton here is a reckless joker and playboy. Colton gets approached by Ann Wagner, a desperate woman whose husband is innocently sentenced to 28 years in a corrupt and inhumanly run Mexican prison. Mrs. Wagner hires Colton to help him escape from prison with money from his wealthy grandfather. What she doesn't know, however, is that the grandfather himself framed Jay Wagner and naturally also causes for all the escape attempts to fail. Nick Colton doesn't give up and thinks up a master plan involving helicopters, airplanes and various accomplices. Oh, and meanwhile he also finds the time to fall for his client. The action sequences in "Breakout" look impressive and spectacular enough on paper, what with helicopter escape and getaway car chases, but they're all actually quite tame. Some of the other escape are humorous (like Randy Quaid dressing up like a woman) but quite implausible and dumb, like Robert Duvall's character Ray Wagner stating so himself. Charles Bronson is handsome and robust as ever, but I still prefer him as the silent and solitary outsider guy. I don't know, maybe it's because you're used to seeing him like that, because he actually doesn't seem too uncomfortable in his role. Strangely enough, the chemistry between him and his real-life wife Jill Ireland works better when they're NOT playing an actual couple. Of all the terrific supportive roles (Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Alan Vint
) I mostly preferred John Huston – the versatile actor and director of "The Maltese Falcon" – as the greedy and hypocrite grandfather. Too bad his role was little more than a cameo.
