Escape from Alcatraz

Escape from Alcatraz is a 1979 American prison action thriller film directed and co-produced by Don Siegel, written by Richard Tuggle, and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin with Danny Glover appearing in his film debut. The film, an adaptation of the 1963 non-fiction book of the same name by J. Campbell Bruce and based on the 1962 prisoner escape from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island, marks the fifth and final collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Dirty Harry (1971). Plot In early 1960 Frank Morris, a criminal who has absconded from other facilities, arrives at the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz is unique within the US prison system for its high level of security, and no inmate has ever escaped. The day of his arrival, Morris steals a nail clipper from the Warden's desk. Over the next days, Morris makes acquaintances with some inmates: the eccentric Litmus, who is fond of desserts; English, a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defense; and the elderly Doc, who paints portraits and once grew chrysanthemums at Alcatraz. Doc's portraits contain chrysanthemums as a symbol of human spirit and freedom. He makes a gift of one of the blossom heads to Morris. Morris also makes an enemy of Wolf, a rapist who harasses him in the showers and later attacks him in the prison yard with a knife. Both men are imprisoned in isolation in the hole.