On January 20, 1960, Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) arrived at Alcatraz to become prisoner #AZ1441. As with many other inmates of the prison, he was sent there because he had a tendency to escape other prisons, and Alcatraz was built to keep people from escaping.
However, according to most records, Morris almost immediately began planning his exit from The Rock. While it may or may not be completely true, on the arrival of two of his former associates, John and Clarence Anglin, Morris accelerated his plans, and on the night of June 11, 1962, they were gone, never to be heard from again.
The events surrounding the event are of course lost, so the details are dramatized for the movie. But that doesn't mean that it's not a good one to sit through.
Morris is no stranger to prison life, and quickly falls in with the crowd at Alcatraz, and sets about planning his escape. A scene where he meets the warden indicates Frank's intelligence as "superior" (no number is given), so someone with his penchant for escape is bound to look for ways out where he can find them.
Making quick friends with English (Paul Benjamin), the prison librarian, nets him someone who has been around for years and knows the lay of the land - as well as the way to perform certain tasks in the cell, such as welding two pieces of metal together for digging around the grate to make an escape.
Another key friend was Litmus (Frank Ronzio), an oddball who was able to obtain most anything needed when Frank needed to get something for his escape attempt. It just cost him a dessert (or, more likely, several desserts). Litmus also kept a small mouse that was his constant companion, and Frank would often throw in some beetles to sweeten the pot for what he needed in a hurry.
Of course, Frank didn't always make friends. He quickly let Wolf (Bruce M. Fischer) know that he wasn't interested in his advances, and that nearly cost him both his life and his opportunity to escape, but those other friendships really paid off, as English saved him in the nick of time when Wolf came at Frank just before the escape attempt.
There really isn't a lot to say about the movie itself - mostly it is just the planning of getting out of the cell block, with the prisoners tunneling through the back of their cells, then building dummies to lay in their beds so the guards don't know they are gone. Once the heads are in the bed, they climb to the top of the cell block and make their way down to the shore, using a makeshift raft built from raincoats to float away.
Don't think it will work? In the Escape from Alcatraz segment of the Escape from Alcatraz, Duck Quack, Stud Finder episode of Mythbusters, the team proved that it was possible for a raft built of raincoats to make it across the rough waters of the bay and to the shores of the Marin Headlands - not Angel Island as portrayed in the movie - so it is certainly possible that the escapees made it and lived a long life. You can make your own decision. The official line is that they drowned, but you never know.
Rated PG. There is a scene where a distraught prisoner chops off his own fingers after losing his painting prisoners, but there's nothing overly graphic in it. You probably ought to keep younger kids away, however, simply for the content.
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