My Review of "Escape From Alcatraz"

Escape from Alcatraz is surprisingly based on a true story. I honestly had no idea. When I saw this come up on Netflix I was surprised because it was the number 1 movie that Netflix kept recommending me to watch. I guess the algorithms work because I watched it eventually.

This movie came out back in 1979 and it stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris. The movie starts off with Frank being placed into the Alcatraz prison. He's put in this prison because he's escaped from all sorts of other prisons that they've put him in. Alcatraz was supposed to be the prison that absolutely no one could escape because it's on a remote island just outside of San Francisco. The swim would kill them if they even tried.

I'm lucky I didn't see this movie before I saw Shawshank Redemption because there are very similar scenes between the two movies. Shawshank Redemption came out back in 1994 so I would say that it definitely ripped off a lot of scenes from Escape from Alcatraz. There are differences but these two movies are awfully close.

There are so many similarities. The guy that comes onto Frank in the shower. The jobs they have to get even the way that they're attempting to escape from the prison. One of Frank's friends in prison even has a pet animal for goodness sake. I just saw too many similarities.

Regardless of the blatant ripping off of ideas. This movie was engaging despite being released back in 1979. Frank often has to deal with this horrible warden that is trying to make pretty much all of the prisoners miserable. He hatches a plan with a group of friends that he makes in the prison and carries out the plan.

The formula is good and Clint Eastwood is probably the perfect person to play Frank. He's pretty cold and stoic but seems to still have a heart of gold. He cares about his fellow inmates but can't do anything about the way they're all treated.

Pretty much all of the actors do a pretty good job at giving life to their characters. It's great that a lot of the characters aren't simply one dimensional characters. We see that some of the prisoners there aren't even there for really good reasons. Now they're treated as scum for doing something as innocent as protecting themselves.

It's funny because they even have a guy that kind of plays the Morgan Freeman of the movie. I just can't get over how similar the two movies are. I guarantee that if you watch both of the movies you'll think that Shawshank Redemption is a rip off of this movie as well.

This makes it very difficult to rate this movie. I loved the Shawshank Redemption but now that this movie blew my mind that Shawshank Redemption has been a rip off all this time I kind of think this movie deserves the accolades that I gave Shawshank all this time. The thing is Shawshank had a different kind of ending than this movie. I kind of enjoyed Shawshank's ending a little better but I don't know.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie not only because it blew my mind that Shawshank ripped it off but because it was genuinely a good movie. I enjoyed it from start to finish despite the fact that the ending is pretty obvious. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. I will have to tell so many people about this movie now. I'll have to watch this movie and Shawshank again to see what I really feel about Shawshank now that the cat is out of the bag.