It’s unspectacular but entertaining, especially for Charles Bronson fans.
Based on the real-life prison escape of Joel David Kaplan in 1971, Breakout features Robert Duvall as Jay Wagner, an American businessman who is framed for the murder of a Mexican national. When he is sentenced to 28 years in prison, his wife, Ann (Jill Ireland,) is desperate to find a way to get him out. She approaches Jay’s grandfather, Harris (John Huston,) for financial help to arrange an escape. She’s unaware that Harris is the man who had Jay framed.
With Harris’ money, she hires Nick Colton (Charles Bronson,) a small-time Texas bush pilot who will reportedly do anything for cash. Ann tells Nick that she’s hiring him to pick up a man in Mexico; leaving out the small detail that it’s a prison break. When that attempt understandably fails, Nick asks for more money and comes up with a harebrained plot to send in his partner, Hawk (Randy Quaid), dressed up as a prostitute to free Jay. When that goes sideways, resulting in Hawk being severely beaten, Nick begins to suspect that someone inside the prison is being tipped off. Smitten by the desperate Ann, he proposes a third attempt involving a helicopter. There’s only one small problem. He can’t fly a helicopter.
Directed by Tom Gries and written by Howard Kreitsek, Marc Norman, and Elliot Baker, Breakout doesn’t bother getting bogged down in details. It’s as if someone at the studio heard the story of Joel David Kaplan and said, “I don’t care what else happens, I want Charles Bronson to be the guy that breaks the other guy out of prison.” So, we don’t really get an explicit reason why Jay Wagner is being framed for murder. None of that really seems to matter. Even the bad guy (of sorts), a CIA agent named Cable (Paul Mantee), isn’t given anything beyond vague motivation.
The film is much more concerned with the goofy antics of Nick Colton, who is quite an odd character. To his credit, Bronson plays the role with comedic panache and makes the film much more watchable than it deserves to be. It’s a nice change of pace for the usually stoic Bronson and he appears to be having a great time. Randy Quaid, fresh from his Academy Award-nominated appearance in The Last Detail, provides additional comedic support and has authentic camaraderie with Bronson. Robert Duvall provides the antithesis as his character descends into desperation as he spends more time in prison.
Despite some cringe-worthy dialogue regarding rape, immigrants, and women, I can’t fault the movie for being a product of its time. Breakout is definitely rooted in the attitudes of the 1970s. It’s unspectacular but entertaining, especially for Charles Bronson fans. (If you count yourself among that camp, feel free to add a star to my rating.)
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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