Breakout

‘Sentenced to 28 years in prison for a crime he never committed. Only two things can get him out – a lot of money and Charles Bronson!’ Popping up on Prime for no discernible reason other than it’s a decent enough back-catalogue entry, Tom Grier’s action movie for Bronson is something of a museum piece in terms of cultural references, but certainly delivers the requisite action scenes. Bronson was a major star in the mid 70’s, and this is one of his best performances; laid-back, intense but not without humour or empathy. If you only know his stoic work in the increasingly risible Death Wish films, Bronson’s Breakout should be something of a revelation.

Based on a real-life chopper in-a prison-yard rescue, Breakout creates a fresh fictional story; John Huston plays sinister figure Harris Wagner who frames-up his son Jay (Robert Duvall with hair) and gets him sent to a Mexican prison, where even hiding in a freshly buried coffin doesn’t provide a reliable way out. Jay’s wife Ann (Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland) realises she’s got a short window to save her husband, and enlists bush pilot Nick Colton (Bronson) to drop a whirlybird into the prison yard and literally pick him up. With Randy Quaid in drag as a diversion, the scene is set for another great escape…

Breakout was a popular film back in 1975, where it was one of the first features to have a saturation release; the same year, Jaws demonstrated that the same strategy could create a goldmine. The action scenes were clearly filmed with a real helicopter, and look smarter than most 70’s Bond movies do, with Bronson a genial centre. What’s not so great is the female roles and the use of rape, albeit a fake rape, as a plot point; like the same year’s The Eiger Sanction, some of the sexual politics dialogue feels more than a little uncomfortable now. It’s also a little wild that a French fort was used for the filming; Mexico wasn’t too keen in being the backdrop for a story about how their prisons were run.

While Breakout isn’t interested enough in its own story to sort out many of the plot points beyond ‘they made it’, it’s a sturdy, dependable movie with a commendably brief 96 minute running time, and it looks far better on streaming than its old pan-and-scan VHS ever did. It’s easy to deride old Stone Face Bronson for his output, but Mr Majestyk, Breakheart Pass, Hard Times and Telefon all demonstrate why he was a deserved box-office king back in the 70’s.