Escape to Victory
Short description
During the Second World War, a former professional footballer held as a prisoner of war organises a team from among his fellow inmates. A German officer, himself a onetime national team player, arranges a match between the prisoners and a German side, turning it into a propaganda spectacle. The prisoners see the fixture as a chance to escape, while the game itself becomes something more serious than sport.
John Huston directed this drama, the twentieth of the twenty-two features he made, between Love and Bullets and Annie. Sylvester Stallone plays the American officer Robert Hatch, Michael Caine the former player John Colby, and Max von Sydow the German major Karl von Steiner. Professional footballers of the era appear alongside them, including Pelé as Luis Fernandez. Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky wrote the screenplay, and Freddie Fields produced.
Made for about 10 million dollars, the film returned roughly 11 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from around 36,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.9 from just over a thousand. A critics' score of 5.7 from ten reviews places it below both audience measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- Footballer Mike Summerbee became friends with Michael Caine during filming. After retiring from sports, Summerbee started producing t-shirts, and Caine became his favorite customer.
- Clint Eastwood, Lloyd Bridges, and Alain Delon were originally intended to star in the film.
- Kevin O'Callaghan, who played the goalkeeper with a broken arm, had never actually stood in goal. He was a midfielder, playing for Ipswich, Portsmouth, and the Irish national team.
- Filming took place from August to November 1980 in Budapest and Paris.
- In the suburbs of Budapest, on the grounds of the former Allag stables, a prison set was built on an area of 1.2 hectares. Construction took three months.
- On the first day of filming, Stallone acted recklessly and threw himself into the thick of the fight for the ball. As a result, he fell, dislocated his shoulder, broke a rib, and was forced to leave the set for several days. After that, a stunt double was assigned to him to replace him in the most dangerous moments. Despite the double's help, Stallone sustained several more injuries. While attempting to take the ball from Pelé, he broke another rib and a finger. After filming, he said that playing football was harder than boxing in 'Rocky'.
- All the extras in the film were local residents. Some speaking roles were also played by Hungarian actors. For example, in the scene where the guards discover the escape, one of them speaks not German, but Hungarian. One of the Resistance members speaks English with a strong Hungarian accent.
- In 2011, Vinnie Jones announced that he was planning a remake of the film starring himself and David Beckham. But the project remains just an idea for now.
- Before filming, Sylvester Stallone lost 40 pounds because he believed a prisoner of war shouldn't look “like an Olympic weightlifter.”
- It is said that Sylvester Stallone wanted his character to score the winning goal, as he is the main star of the film. The screenwriters barely managed to convince him that the goalkeeper was unlikely to score a goal against the opposing team. Eventually, Stallone agreed to a version where his character takes a very difficult shot during a penalty kick.
- Pelé was not only an actor, but also a stunt choreographer on the football field. He notably demonstrated his signature move – a bicycle kick while falling.
- Sylvester Stallone wanted to appear in all the match scenes without a stunt double. He had begun training on a football field even during the filming of his previous movie, 'Nighthawks' (1981). His coach was British goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who played on a World Cup-winning team.
- Eighteen international football stars appeared in the film.
- The film is based on real events related to the famous “Match of Death” which took place in Kyiv in 1942. At that time, the Ukrainian team “Start” won a football match against a team from the German Luftwaffe. Subsequently, all the players of “Start” were arrested, and many of them died in a concentration camp.
- The English football club Ipswich Town participated in the filming of the movie.
- The MTK stadium in Budapest was used to depict the Parisian Colombes stadium where the match takes place. The producers chose MTK because it closely resembled Colombes, specifically because it lacked artificial lighting (artificial lighting on stadiums didn't appear until after World War II). Today, this stadium belongs to the Hungarian football club MTK.
- Of all those who played members of the Allied team, only Stallone and Michael Caine are professional actors. The rest are professional footballers.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
