Search - The McKenzie Break on DVD

Not Quite The Great Escape

Kevin R. Austra | Delaware Valley, USA | 10/28/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"THE MCKENZIE BREAK had potential in focusing on German POWs held in the United Kingdom. The production team did a great job uniforming a multitude of extras in assorted German military uniforms thus representing prisoners of war captured from various Wehrmacht services on different fronts. This could have been the DAS BOOT of Geramn POW movies except that it strayed from the straight formula. Much like HART'S WAR, THE MCKENZIE BREAK begins as a realistic and straight-forward film about life in a prison camp. The plot then makes an about-face and becomes a chase 'em and shoot 'em up movie.



The story: Captain Jack Connor (Brian Keith) is a British officer with little future in the army. His combative personality, heavy drinking, and general rule-breaking attitude have all but led to his being ushered out of the service. Fortunately for Connor his superiors have decided that his rough personality is just the cure for a troublesome POW camp in Scotland. The captive Germans, led by U-Boat Kapitan-Leutnant Schleutter, have thwarted almost every attempt to bring discipline into the compound.



In dealing with Connor, Schleutter has met his match. However, Schleutter has more on his mind than activities within the compound. The U-Boat commander is a fanatic who assembles a mass escape for members of the Kriegsmarine. Fearful that his plot will be betrayed by his Luftwaffe comrades, Schleutter murders a Luftwaffe officer and sabotages a Luftwaffe prison barracks to cover his escape.



Schleutter and the escapees are aided by sympathetic locals and escorted to the coast where they paddle out to meet a U-Boat. En route the escapees, armed with Sterling submachine guns, shoot it out against an unarmed spotter aircraft.



The U-Boat men escape is based on an actual plan devised by the German high commmand to encourage mass escapes by German POWs in France, Britain, Canada, and the USA just prior to the 1944 Battle of the Bulge. Unfortunately MCKENZIE BREAK becomes a sensational VON RYAN'S EXPRESS wanna-be. Once the Germans are out of the camp the remainder of the screenplay relies on hopes that audiences will not ponder too many questions. The support by the sympathetic locals is never explained. Not only did this group provide trucks for the escape, they also armed the Germans with submachine guns. We also find poor Captain Connor limited to chasing after the Germans in a solitary unarmed spotter plane. Where was the RAF while all this was happening? Apparently all the coast watchers went home on this particular day. Eventually one Royal Navy subchaser forces the rescuing U-Boat to dive and leave Kapital-Leutnant Schleutter behind. All in all a poor showing that late in the war.



Yes this is a good movie, but would be even better if the phony armed escape plot was removed from the film."

McKenzie Break

Steven Hellerstedt | 07/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There's a riot going on in Scotland during the waning years of World War II. The German prisoners in an Allied POW camp are laying siege to the compound and the War Office is getting a little frustrated and more than a little worried. To investigate and quell the situation they decide to send the hard-living, hard-loving, rule-breaking Irish Captain Jack Connor to the scene.

Brian Keith plays Connor in this odd POW drama that more or less turns the genre on its head. The inmates, led by U-boat commander Kapitänleutnant Willi Schlüter (Helmut Griem), are clearly in charge of the situation (darn those Geneva Convention rules!) and the Brits are a whisker away from having a Major Situation on their hands.

Enter Jack Connor, a man not only with a plan but enough insight to perhaps do more for the war effort than bring order and discipline to an isolated prison camp. You see, this is a POW movie, so there are tunnels being dug and breaks being plotted. And there's a big, iron fish to land at the end of that break. If only....

I'm a big fan of Brian Keith and, having watched and loved the first season dvd-set of `Have Gun, Will Travel,' most episodes of which were directed by Lamont Johnson, I was pretty excited about THE MCKENZIE BREAK. Keith is fine in this - as is Griem as his major nemesis, I hasten to add - and Johnson ably handles the action. I wanted to love a movie that turns a genre inside-out, but I ended up only liking it. I thought it something a little more than improbable that the Allies would be so delicate about Geneva Convention rules that they would so lose control of a prison camp. That was the big improbability hurdle I had to overcome, although this movie is studded with them. Add to that a rather ambiguous and inconclusive ending and I can't help feeling disappointed. Considering the talent involved, this one should have soared. As it is, THE MCKENZIE BREAK is a solid, albeit unspectacular, movie.

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