Rent Night Crossing (1981)

Enjoyable escape thriller - Night Crossing review by RC

This covers the true story of two families constructing their own balloon at home from raw materials with the aim of escaping from communist East Germany to the West. This is actually a film made by Disney in the eighties and the same story was filmed in 2018 as the German made film "Da Balloon". In this version of the story big hitters John Hurt, Beau Bridges and Jane Alexander all perform well playing Germans although the kids are all a bit too US in the accents for me. Overall it is worth a watch especially when in the last 30 mins it becomes a pure escape movie which gets really tense as the families tackle both the flight and dodge their stasis hunters. One distraction is the score which is a but overdone especially against the flight scenes. I have seen both this and Da Balloon and enjoyed both as the stories are all most identical. On balance I prefer Da Balloon as it is just a bit more authentic being a German made film.