This is one of the all-time great war movies, a PoW adventure from director John Sturges that celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Allied forces even when their backs were to the wall. Sturges had already pulled off the same ensemble trick with The Magnificent Seven three years earlier, and here three of the Seven - Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn - are reunited. They join such British stalwarts as Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence, David McCallum and Gordon Jackson in an escape yarn full of collapsing tunnels, probing searchlights and courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It's impossible not to get caught up in the escape party's plans, and Sturges films each intricate step leading up to the break out with a masterly attention to detail. The cast is full of brilliant characters, from Pleasence's timid forger to James Garner's smooth-talking scrounger, but stealing the show from everyone is McQueen's anarchic but supercool Captain Virgil Hilts, whose attempt to leap to freedom on a motorbike has become an iconic movie image. It's no wonder that Elmer Bernstein's triumphant score has been adopted as an anthem by supporters of England's football team.

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.