Starring stalwarts like James Cromwell, Jackie Weaver and Jack Thompson, this enjoyable Aussie comedy follows a group of seniors as they plan to break out of their retirement home.
Jack (James Cromwell - ‘Babe’) leads a crew, a multi-national special forces team billed as “The Chain Breakers,” as they were once captured and then escaped out of a Vietnamese POW camp. Some 50 years later, Jack is willing to fake a stroke and skulk in a wheelchair to get into a nursing home and get close to the nurse (Jacki Weaver – ‘Silver Linings Playbook’) he used to know, way back then.
He gets just enough time with Norma to realize she is beginning to suffer from dementia. Needing to escape the Hogan Hills Retirement Home for Returned Servicemen and Women, there is nothing for it, then, but to get the old team back together - and in the same nursing home. But Wendell (Roy Billing) is in a wheelchair, Angus (screen veteran Jack Thompson) is “forgetting” things and the Brit, Caine (Dennis Waterman) has even more serious health concerns.
So the slapstick and scheming set-up is a “Great Escape” comedy, but it also aims to probe the serious. The movie evokes ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ as much as it does ‘Grumpy Old Men.’ Irresistible, it is impossible not to be charmed.
Our thanks to Studio Soho for this film.
