This exciting compilation features four classic Steve McQueen adventures, described individually below:
The Great Escape (1963): (WS 2.35:1 / Dolby Mono in English & French)
John Sturges's dramatization of the true story of a group of British, American, and Canadian POWs who successfully escaped from Stalag Luft III in Upper Silesia in March 1944 remains arguably the best World War II adventure film ever made. A host of excellent up-and-coming actors, including James Garner (MAVERICK and THE ROCKFORD FILES), Richard Attenborough (future director of GANDHI), James Coburn (IN LIKE FLINT), and Charles Bronson (DEATH WISH) mesh beautifully in this meticulous recreation of the legendary escape. The German high command rounded up all of the allies' most talented escape artists and placed them in a POW camp specifically designed to foil any unwanted departures, but many of them laboriously tunnel out anyway. Steve McQueen's thrilling motorcycle chase sequence instantly made him a major movie star.
The Magnificent Seven (1960): (WS 2.35:1 / Dolby Digital 5.1 in English, Dolby Mono in Spanish)
John Sturges's remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic THE SEVEN SAMURAI has become an extremely influential film in its own right. A small farming Mexican village that makes involuntary donations of its harvest to a gang of bandits led by Calvera (Eli Wallach) decides to hire a group of professional gunmen, headed by gunslinger-for-hire Chris (Yul Brynner), to protect them. Despite the meager pay, Chris and Vin (Steve McQueen) sign on after the Mexicans see them face down some racist thugs. As they ride back to the village, Chris begins to pick up other gunmen, including Bernardo (Charles Bronson), Lee (Robert Vaughan), Britt (James Coburn, looking eerily like his alter ego in the Kurosawa epic), Harry (Brad Dexter), and aspiring gunslinger Chico (Horst Buchholz falling short in the role played to perfection by Toshiro Mifune in the Japanese original). This rousing action film launched the movie careers of McQueen, Coburn, and Bronson. Although McQueen's character had only a few lines of dialogue, Sturges told the young actor that he would "give him the camera," and certainly kept his word. The movie also benefits tremendously from the unforgettably polyrhythmic score by Elmer Bernstein, among the most famous in film history, so popular and effective that it was used to sell Marlboro cigarettes for years afterward (and was memorably "sampled" in a very early Yes album from the 70s).
Junior Bonner (1972): (WS 2.35:1 / Mono in English).
Steve McQueen plays Junior Bonner, an aging rodeo champ who returns to his hometown to participate in the annual rodeo. He finds his family estranged, does what he can to help, and then moves on...after some serious rodeo riding and a few brawls. Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, and Ben Johnson lend strong support to McQueen's laconic loner.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) - (FS & WS 1.85:1 / Dolby Mono in English, French, English subtitiles).
Rich and charming (but thrill-seeking) businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) must be the last person anyone would suspect as a bank-robbing mastermind, but Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway of NETWORK and BONNIE AND CLYDE), the insurance investigator assigned to the case, gradually catches on. A memorably erotic chess match between McQueen and Dunaway, both at their stratospheric career heights when the movie was filmed, serves as a metaphor for their relationship in the film.
