A stirring example of courage and the indomitable human
spirit, for many John Sturges's The Great Escape (1963) is both the
definitive World War II drama and the nonpareil prison escape movie.
Featuring an unequalled ensemble cast in a rivetingly authentic true-life
scenario set to Elmer Bernstein's admirable music, this picture is both a
template for subsequent action-adventure movies and one of the last glories
of Golden Age Hollywood. Reunited with the director who made him a star in
The Magnificent Seven, Steve McQueen gives a career-defining
performance as the laconic Hilts, the baseball-loving, motorbike-riding
"Cooler King." The rest of the all-male Anglo-American cast--Dickie
Attenborough, Donald Pleasance, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David
McCallum, James Coburn, and Gordon Jackson--make the most of their meaty
roles (though you have to forgive Coburn his Australian accent). Closely
based on Paul Brickhill's book, the various escape attempts, scrounging,
forging, and ferreting activities are authentically realized thanks also to
technical advisor Wally Flood, one of the original tunnel-digging POWs.
Sturges orchestrates the climax with total conviction, giving us both high
action and very poignant human drama. Without trivializing the grim reality,
The Great Escape thrillingly celebrates the heroism of men who never
gave up the fight.
Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an
American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and
the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart.
Thus The Magnificent Seven (1960) effortlessly turns samurai into
cowboys. The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by
banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The
gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on
the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson,
Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner,
the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about
the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but
the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns
fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old
kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it:
bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum....
Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is also a
high-stakes thief; his latest caper is an elaborate heist at a Boston bank.
Why does he do it? For the same reason he flies gliders, bets on golf
strokes, and races dune buggies: he needs the thrill to feel alive.
Insurance investigator Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway) gets her own thrills by
busting crooks, and she's got Crown in her cross hairs. Naturally, these two
will get it on, because they have a lot in common: they're not people,
they're walking clothes racks. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) is a
catalog of '60s conventions, from its clipped editing style to its
photographic trickery (the inventive Haskell Wexler behind the camera) to
its mod design. You can almost sense director Norman Jewison deciding to
"tell his story visually," like those newfangled European films; this would
explain the long passages of Michel Legrand's lounge jazz ladled over
endless montages of the pretty Dunaway and McQueen at play. (The
opening-credits song, "Windmills of Your Mind," won an Oscar.) It's like a
"What Kind of Man Reads Playboy?" ad come to life, and much more
interesting as a cultural snapshot than a piece of storytelling.
Junior Bonner (1972) is director Sam Peckinpah's lovely, elegiac
look at the world of the rodeo--and his only film with nary a bullet wound.
Steve McQueen, engagingly easygoing but determined, is the title character,
a rodeo rider out to win a big bull-riding contest in his hometown. Even as
he confronts his dwindling days on the circuit, he also must deal with his
feuding parents, marvelously played by Robert Preston and Ida Lupino.
Preston is particularly good as the randy old con artist; he and Lupino
strike real sparks. Peckinpah's slow-motion camera is put to particularly
good use filming the balletic violence of the rodeo, at once more terrifying
and awe-inspiring than any gun battle. A lovely country-western valentine to
a dying breed.
Not for sale to persons under age 18. 
