Breakout (1975 film)
Breakout | |
---|---|
Directed by | Tom Gries |
Written by | Eliot Asinof (book) Elliott Baker |
Produced by | Robert Chartoff Irwin Winkler |
Starring | Charles Bronson Robert Duvall Jill Ireland |
Cinematography | Lucien Ballard |
Edited by | Bud S. Isaacs |
Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
rentals)[2] |
Breakout is a 1975 action film from Columbia Pictures starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Robert Duvall, John Huston, Sheree North and Randy Quaid. Bronson and Ireland, the lead actor and actress, were married in real life. The film is notable for giving the usually serious Bronson a more comedic, lighthearted role.[3]
Plot
Harris Wagner (Huston) is suspicious that his grandson, Jay Wagner (Duvall), is causing trouble for his nefarious business schemes, which also involve the
Jay's wife Ann (Ireland) is unhappy at this turn of events and hires a Texas bush pilot in Brownsville, Texas, Nick Colton (Bronson) and his partner Hawk (Quaid), to fly into the prison and rescue her husband.
The first attempts don't work, so Colton quickly learns how to pilot a helicopter.[4]
While Hawk and accomplice Myrna (North) feign a rape to distract the prison guards, Colton pilots a helicopter into the prison complex, Wagner boards the helicopter, and they escape. The group (Colton, Hawk, Myrna, Wagner) return to Texas in a four-passenger light aircraft.
Alerted to the escape, Harris Wagner orders his agent Cable (Mantee) to Texas to intercept the group. Cable, driving a Citroën SM with Washington, D.C. license plates, locates Ann Wagner and follows her Chevrolet Impala convertible, knowing she will lead him to Jay Wagner.
Cable uses false identification to lure Jay Wagner away from the group when they land. Cable nearly succeeds in kidnapping Wagner, but Colton becomes suspicious and pursues them. The film ends with a runway incursion as Cable and Colton fight among departing airplanes at Brownsville Airport.[5]
Cast
- Charles Bronson as Nick Colton
- Robert Duvall as Jay Wagner
- Jill Ireland as Ann Wagner
- John Huston as Harris Wagner
- Randy Quaid as Hawk Hawkins
- Sheree North as Myrna
- Alejandro Rey as Sanchez
- Emilio Fernández as J.V.
- Paul Mantee as Cable
- Alan Vint as Harve
- Roy Jenson as Sheriff Spencer
Production
The prison scenes were filmed at Fort de Bellegarde, France. Romani people (also known as gypsies) local to Southern France stood in for many of the Mexicans.[6]
The original director was Michael Ritchie, but he did not like the idea of the female lead being played by Charles Bronson's wife Jill Ireland. Bronson threatened to leave the project if Ireland was not cast so Tom Gries came in as director. Producer Irwin Winkler was not a great admirer of the final film.[7]
Mexico would not participate in portraying this event.
The film featured a French
Actual event
The film was loosely based on an actual event that took place in August, 1971 (see List of helicopter prison escapes).[8]
Joel David Kaplan was a New York businessman and nephew of molasses tycoon Jacob Merrill Kaplan.[9] The elder Kaplan earned his fortune primarily through operations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.[10]
The J.M. Kaplan Fund (named after the elder of the two) was found in a 1964 Congressional investigation to be a conduit for funneling CIA money to Latin America, including through the Institute of International Labor Research (IILR) headed by Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.[10] These funds were used in Latin America by figures like José Figueres Ferrer, Sacha Volman, and Juan Bosch.[11]
The CIA gave Figures money to publish a political journal, Combate, and to found a left-wing school for Latin American opposition leaders.[12] Funds passed from a shell foundation to the Kaplan Fund, next to the IILR, and finally to Figures.[12] Sacha Volman, treasurer of the IILR, was a CIA agent.[12]
Cord Meyer, a CIA official, was chief of International Organizations Division, a CIA sponsored front for manipulating international groups.[12] It served as part of the covert arsenal to engineer the New World Order.[12] He used the contacts with Bosch, Volman, and Figueres for a new purpose — as the United States moved to rally the hemisphere against Cuba's Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo, the strongman (caudillo) that ran the Dominican Republic for 30 years had become expendable.[12] The United States needed to demonstrate that it opposed all dictators, not just those on the left.[12]
For over a year, the CIA had been in contact with dissidents inside the Dominican Republic who argued that assassination was the only certain way to remove Trujillo.[12]
According to
In May 1961, the ruler of the
In November 1961, Mexican police found a corpse they identified as Luis Melchior Vidal Jr., godson of Trujillo.[10] Vidal was the unofficial business agent of the Dominican Republic while Trujillo was in power.[10] Under cover of the "American Sucrose Company" and the "Paint Company of America", Vidal had teamed up with the American, Joel David Kaplan, to operate as arms merchants for the CIA.[10]
In 1962, the younger Kaplan was convicted in Mexico City of killing Vidal.[10] He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.[10] Kaplan always maintained his innocence.[citation needed] He was held at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the Iztapalapa borough of the Mexico City D.F. region.
His sister, Judy Kaplan, attempted to secure his release in numerous ways, finally developing an audacious plot.
On August 19, 1971, a helicopter landed in the prison yard. The guards mistakenly thought this was an official visit. In two minutes, Kaplan and Kaplan's cellmate Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro, a Venezuelan counterfeiter, boarded the craft and were piloted away. No shots were fired.[17] Both men were flown to Texas and then different planes flew Kaplan to California and Castro to Guatemala.[9]
The Mexican police requested that the
The Mexican government never initiated extradition proceedings against Kaplan.[17] The escape is told in a book, The 10-Second Jailbreak: The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan.[18]
Unlike in the film, there was no rape distraction, no shots were fired, and there was no pursuit by Mexican law enforcement.[9][17]
Release
Theatrical
The film opened internationally before opening in the United States and Canada on May 21, 1975.[1][19]
Reception
Box office
The film earned $16.0 million in
Part of its box-office success was due to the then-novel strategy of "saturation booking", in which Columbia released 1,350 prints simultaneously, combined with a heavy advertising campaign costing $3.6 million on the opening week. This was one of the first major studio films to use this method of release. It grossed $12.7 million in its first two weeks of saturation release.[19] Inspired by the success of Breakout, Universal Pictures used the same technique to promote Jaws. After Jaws became the highest-grossing movie of all time, saturation booking became the standard method of releasing major films.[22][23]
Critical response
TV Guide writes of Breakout: "It's one of those vigilante, simplistic stories that has audiences not mistaking the good guys for the bad guys at all. Unmotivated, often plodding, and singularly without humor, this film could have been terrific."[24]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Breakout at the American Film Institute Catalog
- ^ "Breakout, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- ^ thetelltalemind.com Bronson Cracks a Smile March 16, 2014 Retrieved July 17, 2015
- ^ sonymoviechannel.com Archived July 21, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 17, 2015
- ^ http://www.athensbooksblog.com/breakout-movie-review/ Archived 2015-07-21 at the Wayback Machine athensbooksblog.com Breakout Movie Review Retrieved July 17, 2015
- user-generated source]
- ^ Winkler, Irwin (2019). A Life in Movies: Stories from Fifty Years in Hollywood (Kindle ed.). Abrams Press. pp. 979–1004/3917.
- ^ http://scopophiliamovieblog.com/2013/03/29/breakout-1975/ scopophiliamovieblog.com March 29, 2013 Retrieved July 17, 2015
- ^ a b c "Whirlaway". Time. August 30, 1971. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008. Retrieved May 2, 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "The Kaplans of the CIA - Approved For Release 2001/03/06 CIA-RDP84-00499R001000100003-2" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. 24 November 1972. pp. 3–6. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 23, 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
- . Retrieved 17 January 2019.
- ^ ISBN 978-0669217803.
- ^ a b c Bowles, Chester (3 June 1961). "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XII, American Republics 310. Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Bowles) Notes On Crisis Involving the Dominican Republic". United States Department of State.
- ^ Kross, Peter (9 December 2018). "The Assassination of Rafael Trujillo". Sovereign Media. Archived from the original on 28 August 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
- ^ CIA "Family Jewels" Memo, 1973 (see page 434) Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)
- ^ Constatine, Alex The CIA, the JM Kaplan Fund & a 1971 Prison Breakout in Mexico March 16, 2010
- ^ a b c Rothman, Lily (8 June 2015). "The Strange Case of the Non-Criminal Jail Break". Time. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-03-001011-8.
- ^ a b c "'Breakout,' 2 Wks. In Saturation Run, Takes $12.7-Mil". Variety. 11 June 1975. p. 3.
- ^ "Top 1975 Movies at the Domestic Box Office".
- ^ "All-time Film Rental Champs". Variety. 7 January 1976. p. 44.
- ISBN 0-8223-2115-7, p 78
- ^ "Kirkham a Movie a Day: The Charles Bronson Film Festival: Breakout (1975)". 22 August 2016.
- ^ Breakout at TV Guide
External links
- Breakout at the American Film Institute Catalog
- Breakout at AllMovie
- Breakout at IMDb
- Breakout at Rotten Tomatoes