Strong and Moving!

Fantastic!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Breakout is a cool Charles Bronson action film. Bronson plays a mechanic who is hired by a woman to rescue an American who is serving time in a Mexican prison. Robert Duvall, John Huston (in one or two scenes) and Randy Quaid are the male supporting cast. Jill Ireland and Sheree North are the sex objects to be groped and shared by the men (Bronson is involved in two love triangles). The title scene set to a playful score by Jerry Goldsmith is very impressive. But then the film slows down with Jill Ireland (who plays the jailed Robert Duvall's wife) trying to save her husband. But things pick up after the beer guzzling Bronson makes an appearance. The action scenes with the helicopter were good but not spectacular. Mexicans are portrayed as complete idiots. The actor who played Bronson's helicopter coach and the scenes with him and Bronson were amusing. So were the scenes with Bronson and Shirlee North's husband. Tarantino might have borrowed the coffin scene in KILL BILL 2 from this film and not SPOORLOOS as widely believed.The ending was very very violent with an airplane smashing into the villain who was fighting with Bronson on the tarmac.People in the 70s could look forward to watching cool, badass and provocative action films like Breakout. We are reduced to watching SPIDERMAN and AVENGERS. I bet this film looks great on Blu ray. The DVD I watched was just about OK in terms of picture quality.(7/10)

Tom Gries("Will Penny") directs this thin drama that casts Charles Bronson as independent pilot Nick Colton, enlisted by a desperate wife(Jill Ireland) who wants him to fly into a Mexican prison to rescue her husband(Robert Duvall) who she insists was framed by the mafia. Colton agrees for $50,000, though of course the plan doesn't go as smoothly as they had hoped...Though this has a good cast, there is little else about this film that is memorable, and credibility isn't that high either. Some goofy comedy involving costar Randy Quaid dressed as a woman doesn't help! Tom Gries did far better with "Will Penny"; perhaps his heart just wasn't in this?

Charles Bronson must have had a blast making director Tom Gries' adventure opus "Breakout" because he delivers a memorable performance as a garrulous huckster who likes to show off. Robert Duvall co-stars as the guy unjustly accused of a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to life in a Mexican prison. Mind you, the narrative here isn't as entertaining as Bronson. Basically, one man's father has him confined to prison on trumped up charges. The guy tries to escape a couple of times but matters only worsen. Bronson's real-life wife Jill Ireland was cast as Duvall's wife. She teeters on the brink of hysteria dealing not only with her husband but also with the guys she is paying to save her. A limber Rusty Quaid plays Bronson's sidekick, and Alan Vint is cast as the chopper pilot. Stunt man Roy Jenson fields his biggest speaking role in years as a county sheriff. Rescuing Duvall is no picnic and Bronson encounters his share of obstacles. Scenarists Howard B. Kreitsek, Marc Norman, and Elliott Baker derived their screenplay from the non-fiction book "The Ten-Second Jail Break" by Warren Hinckle, William Turner, and Eliot Asinof. Gries and company spend about an hour setting up the situation, complicating that situation, and finally launching a rescue attempt before Bronson flies a chopper into the awesome looking prison where Duvall's character is incarcerated. The flight in the helicopter over the sprawling prison near the end looks really authentic because we're looking over Bronson's shoulder at the facility. A long-standing confrontation between a high-ranking prison official (Emilio Fernández) and a prisoner (provides some peripheral drama. The suspense isn't as nerve-racking during the escape sequence as it could have been. The finale where a villain is chewed up in a whirling propeller blade is audacious. I remember watching resident in Suttle Hall on the Mississippi State University campus back in the 1970s running and rewinding the death. Bronson is the only actor who plays a character that changes throughout the action. Duvall is confined to a limited performance. As Duvall's father, the great John Huston looks sinister smoking a cigar and plotting his next move against his son. "Wild Bunch" lenser Lucien Ballard makes everything appear terrific.

I liked this movie when I saw it when it first came out, and it wasn't anything special, or so I thought, but when I compare it to most of the movies I've seen lately, it, along with so many of the action type movies, were special, and so much better than most of the crap I've seen over the last 10 years or so. I watched Mr. Majestyk a few nights ago, it's always been one of my favorite Bronson movies, and this one was right up there too. The movies anymore seem to either be full of special effects with no story, or inferior rehashes of older better movies. What point is there of remaking old non special effect movies? Every time they do it, it's almost always a failure. Look at "The Getaway", the 1972 one was great, just for the casting alone (Ali Mcgraw doesn't count, she's just bad in everything), but the remake was just horrible. It's not like I hate all movies made now, but a lot of them are really just not done very well at all, story wise.