Prison film Prison film A prison film is a film genre concerned with prison life and often prison escape. These films range from acclaimed dramas examining the nature of prisons, such as "Cool Hand Luke", "Midnight Express", "Brubaker", "Escape from Alcatraz", "The Shawshank Redemption", and "Kiss of the Spider Woman" to actioners like "Lock Up" and "Undisputed", and even comedies satirizing the genre like "Stir Crazy", "Life", and "Let's Go To Prison". Themes repeatedly visited in the action films include escape attempts, gang activities inside the prison, guard and management cruelty, and an entire subgenre of films where the toughest prisoners are
Escape from Alcatraz (film) wrote, "A delight for cineastes, 'Escape From Alcatraz' could serve as a textbook example in breathtakingly economical, swift and stylish screen storytelling." Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected reviews from 22 critics, and gave the film an approval rating of 95%, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The film grossed $5,306,354 in the U.S. during its opening weekend from June 24, 1979, shown on 815 screens. In total, the film earned $43,000,000 in U.S. theaters, making it the 15th highest-grossing picture of 1979. In 2001, the American Film Institute nominated this film for AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills. Escape from