Rating: 
Summary: what happened?
Review: One of the greatest war movies ever made and one of my all-time favorites...and the picture quality for a " stunning? " high definition transfer is not what was promised. It's grainy, much too often, color quality varies from scene to scene, and the widescreen ration looks different and less narrow than the previous DVd and the movie shown on TCM network.This movie's ratio was always similar to Ben-Hur, super-wide. What gives? The new transfer on The Good. the Bad, and the Ugly was magnificent.
Rating: 
Summary: Minus one star for somewhat deceptive bonus features.
Review: The film is great, we all know that.The remastered audio and video alone merit the purchase. My problem is with the way they took a 50-minute long History Channel documentary from some years back and "re-packaged" it as 5 10-minute featurettes. All they did was run the end credits of each "featurette" (which were really the end credits for the documentary as a whole) at what would have been the commercial break on the History Channel broadcast. Then, at the return from the commercial break, they inserted a "brand new intro" to make it seem like we were gonna watch a new featurette. I guess someone in the Marketing department thought that "5 Featurettes" would read as a stronger selling point than "featuring a 50-minute History Channel documentary." I swear, Marketing people must think we are stupid. The end result is almost the same, except of course you have to weed through a few extra minutes of the same credit sequence over and over and over if you want to plow through the entire documentary. It's just a little insulting, IMHO. But the movie is fun, the "separating fact from fiction" parts are interesting without being derogatory, and we get to see Steve McQueen and James Garner near their peaks. Great film. Buy it, but take the packaging promises with a grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: Again with the re-release!
Review: Though I, like all the others, HATE it when studios do this, there is a solution. Since this is one of my favorite films, and since this is a definate improvement on the origianal DVD release, I bought it. Though Amazon might not like this, at certain stores you can trade in your old DVD's for credit on new ones. Even though you are still losing money, you're not losing as much.
Both the DVD and the film come highly recommended, but I had to knock off a star because of that silly re-release tactic.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT ESCAPE - TRANSFER, A MODEST IMPROVEMENT!
Review: "The Great Escape" is a WWII story about a group of POW's trying to escape from a German concentration camp. It stars Steve McQueen is Virgil Hilts, a American prisoner who delights in tormenting his Nazi captors with the prospect that one day he will successfully escape from their strong hold. Of course, his attempts result in his being placed in solitary confinement throughout the film. But escape plans really get underway when Big X (Richard Attenborough)plans to dig three escape tunnels under the camp. Although this plan of action is successful at temporarily outsmarting the Nazis, but with a victory that is short lived, the outstanding sequence in the film remains McQueen's electric cross-country chase on a motorcycle. James Garder, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn and Charles Bronson round out the stellar cast.
THE TRANSFER: : Time has not been kind to the film elements. Although this 2-disc special edition DVD is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions, thereby improving the over all resolution of the image, colors remain pasty and dated throughout most of the film. Flesh tones are either an unnatural looking orange or overly pink. Outdoor scenes often suffer from a muddy color scheme in which greens, browns, blacks and grays become undistiguished and filtered through a sort of milky haze. As a result, definition and fine details often suffer. There is considerable film grain present during the outdoor scenes as well as some age related artifacts. Edge enhancement is present in some of the wire and mesh detailing of the camp. Blacks are not very deep or solid. Whites are rather grayish for the most part. Truly, this is a just barely middle of the road visual presentation. The audio has been remixed to 5.1 but the dialogue remains hollow and strident sounding. The music has a better spread but it too seems to lack in tonal bass.
EXTRAS: Some very fine short featurettes narrated by Burt Reynolds that (for the life of me) I can't figure out, why they weren't woven into one comprehensive documentary. There's also another 60 min. documentary that was previously available on the non-anamorphic DVD release. Some theatrical trailers, a stills gallery and an audio commentary round out the extras.
BOTTOM LINE: "The Great Escape" is a genuine classic and it comes highly recommended. But the transfer remains something of a disappointment, although it is a marked improvement over the original DVD release.
Rating: 
Summary: "What do you call a mole in Scotland?"
Review: This is one of the best World War II movies I have ever seen.
I really got a glimpse into the prisoners' lives, and the movie was quite touching. This movie is very historicly accurite, and stays to the original story quite closely( I read the original in a December, 1945 Reader's Digest). There is not a lot of action, but at times it can be very suspenceful, and several prisoners and Nazi soldiers are beaten up and killed. (...) though I will not write a review for a while until I have refreshed my memory. Overall, this is one of the most touching war movies I have seen.
Rating:
Summary: Superstar Steve Mcqueen in "The Great Escape!"
Review: Captain Virgil "The Cooler King" Hilts With 17 escape attempts, 1 full escape, and the only escapee not massacred, is by far the the best POW escapee in existance.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT STORY - BAD ASPECT RATIO & VIDEO
Review: This is a great movie about a great story but the DVD offers up poor video on a widescreen set and awful aspect ratio on a regular TV set.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Bad DVD Mastering
Review: Do NOT buy this movie. It says 'Widescreen', but it is not anamorphic. This means that it shows very badly on my 16:9 screen, there's not only black bars on the top & bottom, but also on the left & right. In fact, there's more black on the screen than movie. Very bad and a waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: lovable ww2 adventure
Review: Plenty of famous actors, I liked Bronson in this one. McQueen drew a laugh with his macho act and baseball glove. Biggest problem in this film was that it had the balls to say it actually happened in real life. This preposterous claim is made right at the title as the film starts. Other than that, grab a six-pack and settle in for three hrs of crazy stuff, almost like an extended sitcom.
Rating:
Summary: One of the all-time best movie soundtracks
Review: The Great Escape Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is a great CD that is a must have for fans of the movie. Composed by Elmer Bernstein, the soundtrack for this classic WWII adventure is instantly recognizable and liked by all. The CD blends the fantastic score from the movie while also using several tracks that include dialogue; most noticably Roger's "meanwhile, we dig" speech and Von Luger's "and we will all be able to sit out the war as comfortably as possible." Fans of the movie need this in their collection. Listening to it makes you relive the movie over and over again. You'll find yourself humming along with the theme and then reliving Hilts' famous jump over the barbed wire fence. The Great Escape soundtrack is an excellent CD that is a must have for fans of the movie!
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