The film meticulously depicts the tools and techniques used for the break, including digging through cell walls with sharpened spoons, creating papier-mâché dummy heads to fool guards, and constructing an inflatable raft from raincoats. Production and Historical Accuracy

The story follows (Clint Eastwood), a highly intelligent bank robber with a history of successful prison breaks, who is sent to Alcatraz—a maximum-security facility from which no one has supposedly ever escaped alive.

Morris is greeted by a cold, nameless Warden (Patrick McGoohan) who informs him that "no one has ever escaped Alcatraz... and no one ever will".