Best movie of this year hands down!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Watching this film was a heart stopping experience in more ways than one. While the film was thrilling, the DVD threatened to get stuck and stop working any moment. In fact, it got stuck numerous times but resumed playing again.BECKER and DASSIN did make some unbelievably thrilling and devastating films. The attention to detail of the prison break in this film is just out of this world. There is hardly a dull moment. The prisoners are up against it all the time. It is just one event after the other before the heartbreaking finale.PHILLIPE LEROY and JEAN KERAUDY (surprisingly acted only in one film) must be two of the toughest leading men to ever appear on screen. These guys were MADE for their roles. They are so perfect. The way they slip in and out of various holes is amazing. I wonder if they underwent some sort of physical training for this film.According to some posters on the forum, the basic message of the film is to never trust the bourgeois.Anyway, LE TROU is probably the best prison break movie that I have watched in my life time. It surpasses PAPPILON and THE GREAT ESCAPE in its attention to detail and depiction of male bonding.(9/10)

This movie intrigued me because of his rating. 8,4/10 is really awesome so i set to watch this movie. It's two hours long and i thought it was going to be long, as i will check many times how much time is left. But no, surprisingly i wasn't bored when i watched it and the movie gone pretty fast. The story is simple, they're building a hole in their cell to break jail. It's pretty effective because we will see exactly how they will build it, note that the shots where there beat the floor are around three minutes, which is pretty long. The only problem with this film is the ending, but the rest of the movie is very good. I liked it and i recommend if you like movies which take place in jail and prison escape film.

Jacques Becker's minimalist and effective "The Hole" tells the story of five prisoners, housed in a French prison during the late 1940s, who plot to dig a tunnel and so escape confinement. Becker would use mostly non-actors for the film's central roles, and seems heavily influenced by both Bresson's "A Man Escaped" and the "prisoner of war" movies of Jean Renoir, a director for whom Becker was an assistant. Becker would die of a heart attack shortly after completing his film."The Hole's" characters are an odd bunch, some sentenced for murder, some mysteriously aloof, some from privileged backgrounds and some suspiciously regarded by others as being untrustworthy at best, prison spies at worst. This all strongly recalls Bresson's (superior) "A Man Escaped", in which a character frets over whether or not to trust or kill a cell mate prior to proceeding with his plans for escape. Bresson's hero decides to trust, there are no betrayals, and the film eventually celebrates the prospects of humanity (the escape would have failed without our hero trusting his fellowman). Becker's film, however, presents the more sour, cynical flip-side to Bresson's; it's a film about disloyalty and the impossibility of solidarity."The Hole's" cinematography, by Ghislain Cloquet, also recalls Bresson's work, which was likewise gracious and almost saintly. And like "A Man Escaped", Becker's film features a heightened use of sounds; the chipping away of concrete, the scraping of metal, heavy breathing and long, tense silences. His plot and tone are wonderfully minimalist, recalling Dassin and Melville's work during the period. Melville would regard "The Hole" as a personal favourite.8/10 – Worth one viewing.

"Le Trou" begins with a new cell mate being moved to a new cell in the prison. Apparently they were doing some work in his cell and he and his cell mates were all split up and moved to new quarters. However, the guys already occupying the room have a secret--they've got a reasonably complicated escape plan. At first, they are apprehensive to let him in on the deal but soon realize that they are stuck with him and cannot proceed unless he, too, is part of their plan. The rest of the film consists of a meticulous and slow depiction of their tunnel. If you like heist films that show long and detailed plots, then this one is for you.Is this 'the greatest French film'? Probably not. But I could certainly see why Jean Pierre Melville would adore this movie, as its style is so close to his I might have believed he directed it--had I not known that it was actually directed by Jacques Becker. Like so many Melville films, this one excels in the realism department. And, like Melville, it's about crooks--and the film really focuses on them almost at the exclusion of all else. Now this sort of film does have one inherent problem--if you want to see a film where you can like the characters, then you'll have a hard time with this one. That's because the protagonists are all guys doing time in prison--so they are not exactly angels! As for me, I respected the film more than I liked the film. Simply put, I have seen several other prison films I have enjoyed more. Still, it's well worth seeing---particularly if you like French films, neo-realism (as the actors were real people--including some of the guys involved in the REAL escape about which this film is made) or prison flicks, then you'll most likely enjoy this film.