Beautifully restored by Arrow as part of their new release of John Sturges' masterpiece, The Great Escape II is a very high-profile made-for-TV film that isn't so much a sequel but more of a re-adaptation of the same book the 1963 film was based on and, you know what... it's an underrated little gem. While the first half of the film recounts and condenses much of the climactic events of the original before going off on a parallel tangent, it's the second half where things take a drastically different turn. Directed by Paul Wendkos and Jud Taylor, who played Goff in the original film, the film isn't without style, it genuinely took me by surprise given so much of the film looks rather remarkable, especially the stuff shot by Wendoks in Yugoslavia standing in for the German/Switz countryside. For an NBC TV movie, it's a great deal more brutal in parts than expected, it certainly gets away with a lot for its production. Johnny Mandel's music isn't great but does the job well for the parts that are scored, it lacks a lot of memorable sequences. Where this film really shines is in its performances, especially from the always-fantastic Christopher Reeve alongside Tony Denison and Judd Hirsch, Ian McShane also gets a beefy supporting role and a returning Donald Pleasence even crops up for a while. Granted things go a bit awry in the second half where Screenwriter Walter Davis seemingly shifts the scene to after the war, when Reeve and Denison hunt the war criminals who murdered 50 fellow escapees but it is done with such class and conviction from its cast the clichéd aspects of its writing are more than forgiven. Yes, the film may be a bit predictable and ponderous but if you look at the half that's full rather than the half that's empty, The Great Escape II isn't half-bad.
