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The One That Got Away | 
 enlarge | Studio: Network
Category: DVD
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £6.29
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Rating:  2 reviews
Format: Pal
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Universal, suitable for all
Region: 2
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5027626243142
ASIN: B000EWOO3S
Release Date: April 3, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New and Fully Guaranteed - Over 90% of orders are dispatched same day or next day by First Class post. Please note Danish customers may incur custom charges.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Nazi Braggart April 8, 2006
D. Parker (uk)
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
Franz Von Werra was a mediocre fighter pilot, shot down and captured during the Battle of Britain.
He was first taken to a prisoner of war camp in the Lake District from which he made his first escape attempt. After many days in the Cumberland wilds he finally gave himself up, suffering from hypothermia. He was then taken to a camp in Nottinghamshire from which he again attempted escape this time getting as far as the cockpit of a training aircraft before recapture.
When he eventually returned to Germany by escaping from a train after being sent to a camp across the Atlantic,he made up all sorts of stories of his exploits and was pronounced an ace. Hitler sent him on a tour of Germany telling of his supposed exploits.
Von Werra was killed in a plane crash before the end of the war.
This film is a black & white interpretation of the Von Werra story and although it is quite good it cannot be considered one of the war classics.
 A fine WWII prisoner-of-war escape film...even if we're rooting for the German this time September 22, 2007
C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the better WWII movies about an escape from a prisoner-of-war camp. The story is taut and suspenseful. The odds against success are high but we wind up rooting for the man anyway. The guy is handsome, competent, resourceful and self-confident to the point of smugness. No, the guy isn't played by Steve McQueen. There is no ball-bouncing in a prison cell. The man is Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, played by the German actor Hardy Kruger. Von Werra's Messerschmitt is shot down over England on September 5, 1940. He is captured, interrogated and sent to a prisoner of war camp for officers. He turned out to be the only German captured on British soil who ever escaped and made it back to Germany.
Von Werra turns out to be a committed German officer, determined to escape, and with enough drive, ingenuity and luck to escape from British camps three times. The first time sees him staggering for five days through mud and freezing rain to try to reach a British port and a neutral ship. When he's finally recaptured he's half dead. The British send him to a much tougher camp in the north. This time he organizes a tunnel dig, figures out how to make fake identity discs and how to convert rag-tag clothing into something passably civilian. On this break von Werra manages to talk himself onto a RAF base posing as a Dutch pilot. He's captured while seated in the cockpit of a Hurricane trying to get it started. He planned to fly back to Germany. Now the British ship him off to a prisoner-of-war camp in Canada. They figure that'll take the starch out of his determination to return to Germany. They didn't figure that von Werra would realize the significance of the United States being a neutral country and how close the train taking him to the camp would be to the Saint Lawrence River border. Sure enough, in the dead cold of a Canadian winter (January, 1941), he escapes from the train, works his way through the snow and freezing drizzle to the mostly frozen river. He finds a boat and finally is picked up on the American side. Our movie ends here, with a big smile on von Werra's frozen face and mumbled "thank yous" to the American border guard who found him.
Through all of this the escapes are carefully shown with a lot of dramatic tension. You can't help but wind up hoping von Werra's persistence will pay off. Knowing he's an enthusiastic German pilot, a fighter ace, who is eager to get back to the battles takes a little of the edge off, but still...
The One That Got Away is filmed in black and white. There are no sweeping, beautiful shots of the countryside. We're talking late fall and winter in Britain and Canada. It's cold and grey. If it's not snowing, it's raining. If it's not raining, it's drizzling. If it's not drizzling it's still so cold you'll want a fire going during the day. The acting is as cool and competent as the movie.
And what about von Werra after he made it to America? The Canadians tried to get him back. The Americans wanted to send him back. While everyone was arguing his status, von Werra slipped across the U. S. border into Mexico, then made his way back to Germany by way of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Spain. He arrived in Berlin on April 18, 1941. He was assigned to fly on the Eastern front, became an ace again, then was sent with his unit to the Netherlands for rest and refitting. On October 21, 1941, his plane malfunctioned during a training flight and went down in the sea. His body was never recovered. Franz von Werra's luck had finally run out.
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