This is a re-telling of the World War Two escape story told so memorably in John Sturges' 1963 film The Great Escape. But there is a different focus to this less impressive television film, directed by Paul Wendkos and Jud Taylor: the vow taken by a group of Allied PoWs just before escaping from Stalag Luft III - to re-unite in a London pub on Christmas Day. What emerges from the meeting in London is a plan to hunt down the Nazi commandant who had 50 escapees slaughtered and this post-war revenge quest takes up the second half of the story. There are decent performances from Christopher Reeve (as Major John Dodge - the character is based on a real-life American who served in the RAF), Judd Hirsch, Anthony Denison, and Charles Haid (Renko in Hill St Blues). Donald Pleasence, an Allied prisoner in the first film, here produces another of his more typical unpleasant characters, this time as a SS despot. It's a well-structured adventure, with an interesting sub-plot and, for once, some characters who are realistically afraid of death.


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