Prison Break: The Complete Third Season

Review By: Dan Deevy
DanDeevy@TheCinemaSource.com

What better way is there to prepare for another heart pounding, adrenaline filled, action packed season of the hit show Prison Break than to go back and re-live everything that was great about the previous season on DVD? I certainly can’t think of any.

Thanks to Fox Home Entertainment’s wonderful timing with the release of the complete third season on DVD on August 12th we all have that opportunity. We get to replay everything from the season that proved that this show, which was only supposed to last for one year, has legs to last at least four with fingers crossed for a fifth.

At the close of the marathon race that was season two, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) was finally exonerated in the murder of the Vice President’s brother, Terrence Steadman. And just as we think we are seeing an end to the brothers troubles and incidentally the show itself, the all powerful twist is thrown in at the end that turns the show on it’s ear and puts Lincoln’s brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) in prison in Panama for a murder that he didn’t commit. So now it’s up to Lincoln who is more used to being the brawn than the brains in the operation to come up with a way to free Michael from one of the toughest jails in all the world; a prison so harsh that even the guards have pulled out and left the prisoners to govern themselves.

Of course there was a lot of skepticism surrounding the shows decision to return for a third year, after all the story they had set out to tell had been finished. And admittedly they will never be able to top the originality of the groundbreaking first season, but the characters that were created are so well drawn out and so well acted by the cast that I think audiences are willing to over look quite a bit to get to see them back in their living rooms again week after week.

The first thing to look past is the same thing that fans of the show 24 have had to deal with over the years which is how the hell can all this be happening to one guy? Yes it’s silly - it should have ended on that beach in Panama with everyone going off into the sunset happily ever after, the same way Jack Bower should have retired after that first day, but it didn’t! So the question is how exciting is what they come up with to extend this story? The answer is… still pretty damn exciting. It kept me eagerly tuning back in every week.

There’s of course a new group of characters filling in for all the ones that have died over the past two years, and the most notable are our newest villains. Taking over for the meanest Asian man on the planet, Agent Bill Kim (Reggie Lee), is a far ...