Breakout (1975 film)

Harris Wagner is suspicious that his grandson, Jay Wagner, is causing trouble for his nefarious business schemes, which also involve the CIA. Harris has CIA-operative Cable arrange a murder in Mexico for which Jay is framed. Harris does not want Jay killed, only silenced, so Jay is incarcerated in a Mexican prison. Jay's wife Ann is unhappy at this turn of events and hires a Texas bush pilot in Brownsville, Texas, Nick Colton and his partner Hawk Hawkins, to fly into the prison and rescue her husband. The first attempts do not work, so Colton quickly learns how to pilot a helicopter. While Hawk and accomplice Myrna feign a rape to distract the prison guards, Colton pilots a helicopter into the prison complex, Wagner boards the helicopter, and they escape. The group return to Texas in a four-passenger light aircraft. Alerted to the escape, Harris orders his agent Cable to Texas to intercept the group. Cable, driving a Citroën SM with Washington, D.C. license plates, locates Ann and follows her Chevrolet Impala convertible, knowing she will lead him to Jay Wagner. Cable uses false identification to lure Jay Wagner away from the group when they land. Cable nearly succeeds in kidnapping Wagner, but Colton becomes suspicious and pursues them. The film ends with a runway incursion as Cable and Colton fight among departing airplanes at Brownsville Airport. ==Cast==

The prison scenes were filmed at Fort de Bellegarde, France. Romani people local to Southern France stood in for many of the Mexicans. The original director was Michael Ritchie, but he did not like the idea of the female lead Ann Wagner being played by Charles Bronson's wife Jill Ireland. Bronson threatened to leave the project if Ireland was not cast so Tom Gries came in as director. Producer Irwin Winkler was not a great admirer of the final film. The film featured a French Aérospatiale Alouette II turbine helicopter, the type of helicopter used in the 1973 Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape. The actual 1971 Mexico event where Joel David Kaplan broke out of prison featured a Bell Helicopter. Actual event The film was loosely based on an actual event that took place in August, 1971 (see List of helicopter prison escapes). Joel David Kaplan was a New York businessman and nephew of molasses tycoon Jacob Merrill Kaplan. The elder Kaplan earned his fortune primarily through operations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The J.M. Kaplan Fund (named after the elder of the two) was found in a 1964 Congressional investigation to be a conduit for funneling CIA money to Latin America, including through the Institute of International Labor Research (IILR) headed by Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. The CIA gave Figures money to publish a political journal, Combate, and to found a left-wing school for Latin American opposition leaders. Funds passed from a shell foundation to the Kaplan Fund, next to the IILR, and finally to Figures. Richard N. Goodwin, Assistant Special Counsel to the President, who had direct contacts with the rebel alliance, argued for intervention against Trujillo. An internal CIA memorandum states that a 1973 Office of Inspector General investigation into the murder disclosed "quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters." The CIA described its role in "changing" the government of the Dominican Republic "as a 'success' in that it assisted in moving the Dominican Republic from a totalitarian dictatorship to a Western-style democracy." On August 19, 1971, a helicopter landed in the prison yard. The guards mistakenly thought this was an official visit. In two minutes, Kaplan and Kaplan's cellmate Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro, a Venezuelan counterfeiter, boarded the craft and were piloted away. No shots were fired. Both men were flown to Texas and then different planes flew Kaplan to California and Castro to Guatemala. Unlike in the film, there was no rape distraction, no shots were fired, and there was no pursuit by Mexican law enforcement. ==Release==

Theatrical The film opened internationally before opening in the United States and Canada on May 21, 1975. ==Reception==

Box office Breakout earned $16.0 million in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada, and was the 21st most popular film of 1975. By the time of its second week of US release, it had already grossed $5 million internationally. Saturation booking Part of its box-office success was due to the then-novel strategy of "saturation booking", in which Columbia released 1,350 prints simultaneously, combined with a heavy advertising campaign costing $3.6 million on the opening week. This was one of the first major studio films to use this method of release. It grossed $12.7 million in its first two weeks of saturation release. Critical response TV Guide writes of Breakout: "It's one of those vigilante, simplistic stories that has audiences not mistaking the good guys for the bad guys at all. Unmotivated, often plodding, and singularly without humor, this film could have been terrific." ==See also==