Trésors sous les mers: Alcatraz

I thought this National Geographic documentary, at only 47 minutes in length, was a rather fascinating film of the infamous prison Alcatraz. In 1934, the Federal Bureau of Prisons took over "The Rock" and till its closing in 1963 housed some of the most notorious criminals such as Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and Whitey Bulger.

The main focus of the film is on why Alcatraz was considered nearly impossible to escape from, although it lay just a mile off the coast, in San Francisco Bay. Using computer graphics and high definition sonar scans, the waters surrounding the prison were drained on screen to illustrate what lay on the bottom of the bay, and how this helped caused extreme natural forces which made the waters so dangerous.

There were 14 escape attempts from Alcatraz. Probably the most known was in 1962 when 3 prisoners made elaborate preparations to escape, made it to the water and launched a makeshift raft into San Francisco Bay. The FBI launched an extensive search for the men but it was never proven one way or another whether they actually reached the shores of San Francisco. although some of their materials were plucked from the water such a their life vests and a paddle.

Overall this documentary, directed by Wayne Abbott, crams a lot into its brief running time, and I found it to be very interesting and informative. By the way, Alcatraz is now a museum run by the National Park Service, and is host to over a million visitors a year.

I loved it! Fun and interesting and fascinating interviews with ex-inmates. Very educational and thought provoking. I was intrigued by the research and light it shed on what we know about Alcatraz.

The creators act like this is the first time the bottom of san Francisco bay has been mapped but there has been an accurate recreation open to the public for almost 60 years in the city. the narration also mentions many threads of thought that it fails to follow up or subsequently ignores. when discussing the escape attempts, they make it sound impossible to safely swim from the island to the shore but thousands of people have done it and continue to do so on a regular basis. For some reason they mention the risk of sharks, which is 1) blown out of proportion and 2) has no bearing on the underwater topography - the professed focus of this show. the only reason I even gave this 3 stars was for the computer animation.