Escape from Alcatrazis a curious "action" picture, as British critic Raymond Durgnatdescribes it: "Though it's cut to the caper or escape formula-and thoughits melodramatic excitements oppose it to neorealism-the film isdominated by hands at work, hands with knives or wooden sticks, carvinga man-sized hole in a cell airshaft, or sculpting a bust to double forthe prisoner. Its concentration on the physical...weirdly matches RobertBresson's strange way-in Pickpocket and A Condemned Man Escaped-ofemphasizing physical action even as he dematerializes it. Escape fromAlcatraz celebrates the criminal as skilled craftsman, as blue-collarworker alienated from social norms but not from his work, andpassionately involved in that strange zone between social hostility andphysical survival."