TRY TO ESCAPE PRISON MOVIE

Amazingly, this was actually the second movie my boyfriend suggested when I told him I was putting together a ranking of prison escape movies, and when I responded to say I had already placed it third-from-the-bottom on my list, I swear it broke his heart a little. Still, I do appreciate the balls-to-the-walls commitment to its cockamamie gambit, which involves John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as an FBI agent and terrorist/murderer (respectively), who wind up *surgically switching faces* in order to thwart a terrorist plot and get revenge (for Travolta) and also get more revenge (for Cage). But his prisoner transport plane… is hijacked by the other prisoners! This film features an amazing all-star cast, including John Cusack, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Dave Chappelle, and Danny Trejo, and I hope they were all paid a ton of money.įace/Off gets props right off the bat for its incredibly punny title, and loses points for most everything else. Ranger Cameron Poe” (quoting from IMDB because I really like the concision well done guys) who is bound for a new life of freedom. He plays “newly paroled ex-con and former U.S. But it does say something.įew years are lived to the fullest the way Nicolas Cage lived in 1997. Interestingly, though, this was the first movie my boyfriend suggested when I mentioned that I was putting together a ranking of prison escape movies, so I don’t know what that says about him. Sly’s clear excitement about working with his friends is by far the best part of this otherwise terrible movie. He plays another convict, and they decide to work together.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in this movie as well, which also feels obvious, somehow. And he has to use his skills to escape, obviously. Sylvester Stallone plays a “structural-security authority” (lol) who is the victim of a conspiracy that causes him to get locked away in the world’s most top-secret prison.

As always, we’re counting from worst to best.Ĥ5. Because I’m not taking them out to watch them and put them on this list.Īnyway, here goes. The special-edition DVD box they each live in, on my shelf. It’s a great movie, but the prison escape is merely a small comic interlude.Īctually, Silence brings me to another point: movies where the villain gets himself captured/relocated on purpose, and then breaks out of his container (such as Skyfall) do not count. Neither does the 1966 Blake Edwards comedy The Great Race, even though Natalie Wood and Peter Falk bust out of prison together to save Jack Lemmon, who has stolen the identity of a Hapsburg prince. It’s impossible for that movie to be more in favor of prison. Despite that one sequence, The Silence of the Lambs is not a Prison Escape Movie. So, I’ll say this again… a movie with a big prison escape scene might not cause the film to qualify if the prison escape scene isn’t there to represent or underscore SOME existing themes of tyranny, fascism, subjugation, poverty, disenfranchisement, or inequality. Chiefly, in a Prison Escape Movie, the prisoners attempt to extricate themselves for another chance at freedom, because freedom is absolutely worth the risks of being captured.Įven though there is a wealth of great prison break television out there, from Escape at Dannemora to Lupin to-hear me out- White Collar, this list is only for movies. One of the most important aspects of the Prison Escape Movie is an emphasis on the oppression and abjection promoted by the prison, as well as within the broken justice system that relies on carceral institutions. To be on this list, a movie must centrally feature the escape, both tonally and practically, emphasizing the conditions that create the need for the escape, the process of planning and strategizing the escape (including through teamwork), the actual escape, being on the run or pursued or recaptured, and/or a general atmosphere of fear, fascism, paranoia, and injustice. What are the parameters? The criteria for this category seem straightforward, but might involve even more hair-splitting than usual, so please read the guidelines, or what we’ll have here is… failure to communicate.įirst of all, not every movie that features a prison escape or escaped prisoners is a Prison Escape Movie.

Okay, everyone, it’s time to rank Prison Escape Movies.

Try to escape prison