Comingsoon.net is breaking free from the big house to honor the greatest prison breaks in film. Check out our picks in the gallery below!
For most, a prison sentence leaves very little wiggle room. For a select few, a prison sentence serves as a choice instead of a requirement. Throughout the history of the civilized world, art has sought out prison break narratives. From the Bible to Medieval times to modern day, the thrill and suspense of a prison break never disappoints.
For the sake of this slideshow, let’s keep things focused on the 20th and 21st century. More specifically, the history of film in the 20th and 21st century. Over the past 120 years or so, these are the films that have proven their ability to show off the best prison break sequences in film.
Prison break movies
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Chicken Run (2000)
When you’re a chicken trapped under the control of a couple of evil farmers, sometimes all it takes is a rambunctious rooster to rally the troops and plan an escape. Aardman’s Chicken Run paved the way for some truly great stop-motion films, but it also boasts a hilarious plot about escaping the coop.
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Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Paul Newman was one of the greatest male leads of the mid-20th century, and Cool Hand Luke is a prime example of this. Playing a relaxed Southern man, Newman’s Luke refuses to abide by his two-year prison sentence.
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Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Clint Eastwood hasn’t slowed his roll since bursting onto the scene back in the mid-1960s. 1979’s Escape from Alcatraz teams the actor up with two other prisoners who make a plan to escape the most infamous prison in the United States.
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Escape from New York (1981)
John Carpenter’s campy action-thrillers are hard to beat. Escape from New York depicts the city as one big prison, with Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken tasked with saving the President from all the chaos.
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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Wes Anderson’s films have grown more and more meticulously designed as time has gone on. His most recent live-action venture, The Grand Budapest Hotel, features an incredibly pleasant prison break.
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O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The Coen Brothers very rarely disappoint, if ever. (Their only real critical misfire, The Ladykillers, really isn’t bad at all—just a little different than their standard fare.) Their take on Homer’s Odyssey comes in the form of a prison break comedy set in the deep south in the 1930s.
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Paddington 2 (2017)
Taking a page out of the Wes Anderson Book of Filmmaking, Paul King’s Paddington 2 has a prison break sequence filled with all kinds of dazzling pinks and whites (thanks, in part, to Paddington botching the prison’s laundry). It’s an overwhelmingly delightful movie, and its great escape is no exception.
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The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This entry belongs in this slideshow, without question. Tim Robbins delivers one of his many great performances of their 1990s here, plus he gets the chance to act out one of the most inspiring prison breaks in film history.
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The Great Escape (1963)
Not only is The Great Escape’s escape, well.... great, but it’s also plenty brave. The film follows hundreds of prisoners of war during World War II as they plan to escape from a German camp.
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Toy Story 3 (2010)
Who says escaping from a daycare isn’t like scraping from a prison? It certainly is when you’re a group of toys in search of your rightful owner, as Toy Story 3 shows.
