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Hardy Kruger, Colin Gordon, Michael Goodliffe, Terry Alexander, Jack Gwillim ... see more see more... , Andrew Faulds , Julian Somers , Alec McCowen , Harry Lockhart , Robert Crewdson , George Mikell , George Roubicek , John Van Eyssen , Frederick Jaeger , Richard Marner , Paul Hansard , Alec Gordon , Glyn Houston , Stratford Johns , Terence Alexander

The title character in this fact-based POW drama is Franz von Werra, played by Hardy Kruger. Shot down early in the war, Luftwaffe pilot von Werra is incarcerated in an English prison camp. He refuses... read more read more... to submit to camp routine, insisting that he's on the brink of escaping. After two failed attempts, von Werra is transferred to a camp in Montreal. If you want to know what happens next, take a squint at the title. If you want to know how he does it and why he gets away with it, catch the film. One That Got Away was based on a novel by Kendal Burt and James Leasor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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12% want to see it

1,303 ratings

R, 1 hr. 51 min.

Directed by: Roy Ward Baker

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DVD Release Date: May 13, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (51)

  • karenshaub
    October 29, 2009
    karenshaub
    THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY is an exciting WWII film that is based on Kendal Burt's book detailing the real life exploits of Swiss born Franz von Werra, a German pilot who is captured by the British when his plane crashes. Von Werra is played with a muted but still smug swagger by Hard... read morey Kruger,a favorite of mine since SUNDAYS AND CYBELE (LES DIMANCHES DE VILLES D'AVRAY) which won the Oscar for Best Foreign film in 1962. The pilot's sole goal is to be assigned to a POW camp so he can go about the business of escaping, the Brits are more concerned with trying to pry information out of him--even going so far as to suggest that his well-known heroics might be all so much fakery. No go. Finally they give and he's sent to a camp from which he quickly attempts an escape but is just as quickly captured and shipped off to another camp. At the second camp the escape is more organized a la THE GREAT ESCAPE but with much the same results for von Werra. And so it goes until he is shipped off to Canada with other escape prone Germans, where he makes his final bid for freedom. The fact that this film was made so soon after the end of WWII and yet Kruger can still makes us feel so much empathy for his character and genuinely make us hope for him to succeed is a testament to both Kruger as an actor as well as the writers and the director Roy Ward Baker. Don't forget to read the epilogue and find out what happened to von Werra after he left Canada!

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Critic Reviews

John J. Puccio
May 5, 2012
John J. Puccio, Movie Metropolis

...a top-notch suspense thriller, with fine acting from everyone involved but especially from Hardy Kruger, who holds it all together splendidly. Full Review

Christopher Lloyd
June 27, 2011
Christopher Lloyd, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The German POW character played by Hardy Kruger is not terribly different from Steve McQueen's star-making role in The Great Escape - the dedicated escape artist who singlemindedly focuses on getting ... Full Review

Shane Burridge
January 1, 2000
Shane Burridge, rec.arts.movies.reviews

Stays on its toes the whole time.

January 26, 2006
Time Out

Click to read the article Full Review

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The One That Got Away Trivia

  • Which movie has the tag line: The story about the one that got away and the one she never saw coming. (Hint: Ashley Judd)  Answer »
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