Disturbing yet enthralling

Beautiful, moving film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY (not to be confused with the low-rent Chris Ryan Gulf War story) is a black and white British wartime thriller with an unusual premise: the hero is a German captured by the British and determined to escape from them at all costs. The film has the hook of being a true story and turns out to be unmissable viewing.I admire the guts of the guys at Rank to make this film in the first place; they must have questioned their audience's willingness to respond to and even sympathise with one of the German 'bad guys' a mere twelve years after the end of WW2. To his credit, Hardy Kruger doesn't go out of his way to make his lead character likable; however, he is driven and polite, refusing to resort to violence in his bid for freedom, and that's what makes him such a great character.In addition, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY has one of those excellent thriller set-ups in which every moment of the film is devoted to the thrills and suspense; no time for padding here. Roy Ward Baker contributes some of his finest directorial work, and the supporting cast of Michael Goodliffe, Terence Alexander, John Van Eyssen (DRACULA) and even 'ALLO 'ALLO's Richard Marner add to the overall experience. In fact, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY is something of a minor classic...

"The One That Got Away" stars Hardy Kruger playing German fighter pilot Lieutenant Franz Von Werra shot down during the blitz. It is a 1957 movie based on the true story of the only German prisoner to escape from a British POW Camp. After a couple of escape attempts he is eventually shipped to Canada from where the authorities believed there would be no escape. Whilst travelling by train across Canada to his new camp he escapes by jumping from the train. He makes his way to the USA before it's entry into WW2 & then on to Mexico from where he got passage back to Germany. In reality Von Werra was a staunch, die-hard Nazi but in the movie his character is that of an apolitical, arrogant & cocky man, presumably to make him more appealing to British & American audiences. Kruger plays him with a mixture of boyish charm & dash so that well before the end of the movie even us Brits are rooting for him to succeed. The filming, scripting & the pacing of this suspenseful movie are all first rate & I have read that it is also a very popular movie in Germany. Presumably, this is because it depicts a German getting one over on the British. In real life Von Werra returned to active duty as a pilot but was shot down again & killed before the wars end. All in all, this is a cracking good story very well filmed & told.

The One that Got Away (1957)Not quite documentary in form, this is still a true life story told in a dry and sometimes rather funny British way about the one known P.O.W. who escaped from the British and returned to Germany in WWII. They tell you this in the opening titles, so in a way you know the whole plot.And this changes the way you look at it all, wondering, okay, now how is he going to escape. And then he does. Yes. But it's how it happens, and the incredible chutzpah and cleverness that let it follow through. It's the kind of part Brad Pitt would play, with a terrible German accent of course, but this one is 1957 and Hardy Kruger, who is German (he's still alive in his 80s), is played with dash and compassion. I liked him despite the ingrained sentiment we have (here in the U.S. at least) that Nazis in the movies are terrible people.This is Kruger's first significant film role, and he actually served in the German army as a teenager in the war. His character is so likable and cunning, you gradually come to admire and almost root for him, even though the British and later the Canadians are all doing a pretty decent job overall, however lax it might seem to us. This is set in 1940, and the U.S. isn't yet in the war and so represents neutral territory even for a Nazi (always a weird thing to swallow in retrospect) and this plays a role in the latter half the movie. The drawback of the film is its inevitability. And its linear quality, following the increasingly outrageous and difficult escape. But it's smartly done, with understatement, and if you like the bravery and adventure of a man on his own against the odds, this might just resonate. And of course WWII buffs will get it at least from the periphery. It's got some good glimpses of planes and flying, and a decent sense of life on the ground in this period.

POW escape movies form almost a genre of their own and there were quite a few released in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. They mostly dealt with Allied POWs, naturally, and the drama was partly masked by expression of camaraderie and rough humor. This one, in simple black and white, has little of that. It's about Franz von Werra (Hardy Kruger), a German pilot who managed to escape from the grasp of the UK after his BF 109 was shot down in England in 1940.In his first escape attempt, Kruger simply rolls over a stone wall and hides from his guards during an exercise period. He drives himself to exhaustion and is recaptured, half-dead, during a freezing downpour.In his second attempt, he tunnels out of a prison camp and makes his way to a British training airfield, posing as a downed Dutch aviator. He bluffs his way into the cockpit of a British Hurricane and is about to take off before being prevented at the last minute at gunpoint.Kruger is then sent to Canada where he throws himself unobserved out the window of a speeding train into a very effectively portrayed Canadian winter. He manages to make his way to the St. Lawrence River, mostly frozen, steals a boat to cross the open section of the river, and collapses on American soil -- America being a neutral country at the time.Though the movie is over, Kruger is not yet finished and he crosses the border into Mexico, thence to South America where he finagles his way back to Germany. He crashes into the sea during a patrol and is never seen again.The role of Franz von Werra stretches Kruger's acting talents to the limits. He must scheme, impersonate others, and suffer. And he does much of it in too obvious a fashion. The most difficult scenes involve his imposture as a Dutch pilot, making up details of his identity and experiences to suit his changing circumstances. He must be happy-go-lucky in a British manner. Tut tut, old boy. Spot of trouble with the old Wellington, don't you know. The British he meets along the way, both civilian and military, mostly buy his story -- but you and I wouldn't.The most amusing scenes have Kruger demonstrating determination in the face of effusively polite RAF interrogators. The most gripping show Kruger crossing the miles-wide St. Lawrence, half frozen, pushing and pulling his stolen boat up and down heaps of ice, his body threatened with momentary implosion. It's a positive relief when he staggers into Ogdensberg.The movie has an unexpected tension. Not just because of the story itself but because this is a British movie made only eleven or twelve years after the war, and it has a likable, if still wildly nationalistic, German protagonist. Britain suffered abominably during the war. When this was released, some neighborhoods in the docks were still burned out shells left over from the Blitz, and they'd remain that way for a couple more years. The war cost England a great deal in terms of lives and money, so in a sense this is a courageous movie. Twelve years between lethal enmity and the disinterest on display in this film. Should there be a statute of limitations on international hatreds? It's only a rhetorical question but it's raised by the nature of this film.