Breakout (Tom Gries, 1975)

 

Within the first fifteen minutes of Tom Gries’ Breakout, we see Mexican authorities set up a murder and then swoop in to arrest American businessman Jay Wagner, who in what appears to be the sketchiest and most evidence-deficient trial of all time is convicted and sentenced to twenty-eight years in a Mexican prison; we rapidly learn that some unspecified aspect of Jay’s approach to business threatened the interests both of the company headed by his grandfather Harris and of the CIA, the old man collaborating in framing his grandson on condition that he be kept alive, however meagrely. The fact of Jay being played by Robert Duvall and his grandfather by John Huston might have lent this highly shaky set-up a patina of class and persuasiveness, but their presence in such low-grade, functional roles remains bewildering to the end. The primary focus is on pilot Nick Colton (Charles Bronson), engaged by Jay’s wife (Jill Ireland) to get her husband out; Bronson is genial and amused, at the centre of much easygoing banter and knockabout comedy, his portions of the movie in no way coalescing with the conspiracy-heavy framework. The film lacks much atmosphere or tension, with a highly sanitized portrait of the prison, its deprivations mainly conveyed through a sense of Wagner’s strength ebbing away (although in this case that’s hard to distinguish from actorly disinterest); the action scenes are crisply executed but hardly plausible, and the ending strangely fails to close the loop on the overriding narrative, lacking for example any confrontation between Wagner and the conniving old man. The film slightly departs from the usual Bronson-Ireland paradigm in firmly attaching her character to another man, but then can’t resist hinting at a mutual attraction between her and Colton; Ireland’s stiffness is far outshone though by Sheree North in the role of another team member, even if much of what she’s given to do and say is distinctly demeaning.