Escape to Victory (1981) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by koshersushi ★★★ 3

  Goals against the Nazis:

  Messi: 0

  Maradona: 0

  Cruijff: 0

  Pelé: 1

• Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★★ 18

  "You give me ball. And I do thiiis, thiiiis, thiiiis, thiiiis, thiiiis, goal. Easy!"

• Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 6

  Fight! - Stallone v. Schwarzenegger: A Rivalry of Muscular Proportions

  I was going to make a joke about how this is basically The Longest Yard and The Great Escape had a lovechild, or the writers saw this and decided to blend them together, and what a cool idea it was, and how it made for a more tense movie with these high stakes at hand. How cool that we got these professional footballers, namely the icon himself, Pele, in a really solid performance! How everyone did a very good job, from Caine as the witty leader, Stallone as the hot-headed prisoner and what great chemistry they had. How really good was the whole game scene? I especially loved the smoothness…

• Review by theriverjordan ★★½ 19

  Every student in a Western history class learns the same somewhat true legend: around Christmas 1914, soldiers across the frontlines of the first World War lay down their weapons on Christmas Day for a ceasefire soccer/football match.

  The story becomes a little less endearing, though, when one of the sides arent just Germans… but actually Nazis.

  It seems odd that John Huston, part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Second World War, and creator of some of the most essential American propaganda pieces of the era, would fail to realize this distinction.

  It’s fair, though, to give Huston credit for acting on another aspect of his own reputation in making “Escape [to Victory].” The aspect where he never…

• Review by C4rlo5 ★★★½ 9

  Pelé playing the harmonica and scoring versus nazis, what else you need?

  Watch this classic, I thought this one had a bigger popularity around Letterboxd, but I see it’s a bit unknown.

• Review by Xeremy Hall 🟠🟢🔵 ★★★½

  A true story about soccer match that takes place at a German P.O.W. camp in 1941 Ukraine. This is an interesting story made even more interesting by the fact that it really happened.

  Sylvester Stallone, Pelé, Michael Caine, Max Von Sydow, and Bobby Moore star in the WW2 story of hope in one of the most hopeless places in the world. A German and British officer come to terms on a camp soccer match Germany vs. the Allied powers. This film is inspired by the story of the Death Match, a WW2 soccer game in German occupied Ukraine where the allied team was supposed to lose but managed a victory instead.

  While I don't believe the escape that takes place…

• Review by Milo ★★★★★ 1

  "We don't want you shot as a spy, do we?"
  "I don't want to be shot as anything."

  Not just the greatest football movie ever made but also the greatest sports movie ever made, John Huston's Escape to Victory is one of his most underrated works and a film that by all rights shouldn't work as well as it does, mashing up a World War 2 prison escape drama with a classic football underdog tale set against an epic Bill Conti score with an all-time great theme tune.

  The perfect viewing entertainment for a lazy Saturday afternoon, Escape to Victory boasts good performances from an unlikely collaboration of actors who can't play football (Stallone at one point, decides to rugby…

• Review by Austin Shermer ★★★½

  It's pretty much The Longest Yard but with Nazis which is about as good of a premise as it sounds.

• Review by Matt Gourley 3

  What happens when Sylvester Stallone summonsBill Conti and tries to Rocky-fy a John Huston movie? Victory is what happens. Yes, Victory the title,but more, a victory for comfort-film lovers everywhere.

  One can have a favorite sport but can one have a favorite war? Well, I do. At least for cinema. Soccer and good old WWII. I love this movie. I love Pelé and his bicycle kicks, I love 47 year old Michael Caine and his ability almost look like he wants to play world-hangs-in-the-balance football. And I love you Max von Sydow, you reluctant Nazi, you. ‘Hatch! Hatch! Halftime! Halftime!’

• Review by Michael501 📺 ★★★½ 3

  1981 In Review - July
  #17

  The head of a German POW camp, soccer enthusiast Karl von Steiner (Max von Sydow) organizes a match between Nazi players and their Allied captives. Orchestrated as a way to push the Third Reich agenda, the high-profile game is set to feature an international team led by John Colby (Michael Caine), a veteran British player. While the team, which also includes Luis Fernandez (Pelé) of Trinidad, trains for the match, Robert Hatch (Sylvester Stallone) plans a dangerous mass escape from the camp.

  A perennial Bank Holiday favourite and not to be taken too seriously. This is a fun movie which is basically The Great Escape mixed with the beautiful game of football.
  It’s almost…

• Review by Cinematic Underdogs ★★★ 4

  The fact that this film is not slotted in the pantheon of classic sports movies is somewhat baffling, especially since it’s a genre curated primarily by dads. This is undeniably a dad movie — a low-rent The Longest Yard meetsShawshank Redemption meets The Great Escape. Don’t let those references fool you though — this is thoroughly Sunday matinee stuff. It’s brilliantly cast, well shot, nicely scored, and surely competent. But it’s also preposterously silly and overwhelmingly mediocre.

  Set during WWII, Escape to Victory tells the story of a ragtag group of western POWs who are propositioned by an SS general to play a propagandistic soccer match in Paris against their Nazi occupiers. The purpose of the game is to showcase…

• Review by Graham

  Top 100 Directors Challenge: 54. John Huston

  Escape to Victory walked so Chicken Run could, you know...