Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

tkidcharlemagne I am incredulous how no one has noted the communistic propaganda in this piece. Most notably it's right there in plain sight. The cell number. R17. Revolution 1917; Russian revolution 1917. The director was a noted Jewish communist and was blacklisted because of it. I don't want to dwell too much on that as this is an ideology I despise. However the movie has a kinetic energy that modern movies find hard to surpass. Superb performances and great editing. This could just as well be an allegory for the bravery of any action against a brutal totalitarian movement.

classicsoncall Hume Cronyn takes advantage of his only career villain role and runs with it, capturing the savage brutality of a man who intends to replace his boss by any means possible. That includes playing mind games with an inmate leading to the man's suicide, and brutally beating a prisoner to make him talk about a planned prison break. For Captain Munsey (Cronyn), kindness equals weakness, and his actions reinforce a philosophy of toughness with prisoners that Westgate Penitentiary's own warden is disinclined to take.Though Cronyn owns every scene he's in, it's Burt Lancaster's picture for the most part. As convict Joe Collins, the story opens with him returning from solitary, set up by another inmate to take the rap when a shiv is found on his person. Collins is popular with his fellow prisoners, who take a unique form of revenge on the guy who framed him. Let's just say the guy wound up with a pressing problem.There's a calendar girl on display in Cell R17 that plays an interesting part in the story. She represents for the inmates the ideal of a girl left behind, and Collins' cell mates are included in flashbacks with the dames that did them wrong or held some special significance. I thought those sequences were well done, and I'd sure like to know who the model was for the pin-up. In "The Shawshank Redemption", we all knew it was Rita Hayworth.Out of sheer coincidence, this is the second film in a row I've watched by director Jules Dassin, the other one being the French heist film "Rififi", made when he left the country following an investigation by the 1952 House Un-American Activities Committee. I find this picture to be the stronger of the two, though both are recommended for fans of noir styled drama that deal with unsympathetic characters. This picture ends on a somber note when the prison break goes bust, with singing inmate Calypso (Sir Lancelot) offering the prison doc the most reasonable of explanations one could come up with - "...whenever you got men in prison, they're going to want to get out."

tomgillespie2002 When Jules Dassin was placed on the Hollywood Blacklist in 1950 during the making of Night and the City, the director was on a roll. Along with Night and the City, which he filmed before being banned from the production studio, bringing his flourishing career to an immediate halt, Dassin also made The Naked City (1948) and Thieves' Highway (1949), now classics of the noir genre, and Brute Force, possibly the weakest of his noir quartet but a thrilling, insightful film nonetheless. Although set entirely inside prison walls - with a few flashback cutaways - Brute Force is pure pulp noir, featuring a towering lead performance from Burt Lancaster and a tour de force by Hume Conyn as the film's main antagonist.Joe Collins (Lancaster) has just done a stint in solitary. Being lead back to his cell by chief of security Captain Munsey (Conyn), Joe maintains his innocence and that the knife he was found with was planted on him. It turns out that Joe is indeed innocent of his alleged crime, and along with his friends from cell R17, knows who the culprit is. Their own brand of justice involves guiding the offender with flame-throwers onto a huge plate press while the guards are distracted by a brawl. With so much violence occurring inside the prison walls, Warden Barnes (Roman Bohnen) is put under pressure to control the inmates through strict discipline and the guards enforcing their authority. This catches the attention of the ambitious Munsey, and the likable Dr. Walter (Art Smith), who although constantly inebriated, can see the bubbling tensions and inevitable explosions of violence that are due to come.The film's title is suitably apt for the attitudes of the two opposing factions. Joe and his crew plan their escape by taking the prison with an arsenal of weapons at their disposal, while Munsey, using the warden's wavering support as an opportunity to rise through the ranks, starts to manipulate the prisoners into becoming informers and gleefully beating upon a prisoner when he refuses to talk. It's about the ugliness of brute force, and disastrous results that come from employing it. Munsey is a small man, but delights in imposing his authority on the weak and the restrained like a bullying victim getting revenge on the big boys who stole his lunch money. It's riveting throughout, but could have done without the flashback scenes, where it is revealed that the gang are all locked up as a result of some femme fatale or other. It builds to a ferocious climax, where the inmates fight the guards, ending on a note as suitably grim as it's portrayal of the durability of the prison system.

Robert J. Maxwell This story of the half-dozen inmates in Cell R17 of a prison that looks something like Sing Sing is pretty earthy stuff. What a cast. Burt Lancaster is the leader of the attempt to break out. The other cell mates include Jeff Corey, Howard Duff, and Whit Bissell, and John Hoyt -- who was the Martian with three arms in a "Twilight Zone" segment, as well as Decius Brutus in MGM's "Julius Caesar". Charles Bickford is the prison's newspaper editor and Sam Levene is the prison reporter.On the staff side of the cast list, Roman Bohnen is the weak-willed prison warden, Jay C. Flippen and Roy Teal are corrections officers, and Hume Cronyn is superb as the Captain of the Guards.I kept thinking how easily this could have been a film about Stalags or concentration camps in World War II Germany. Escape is hopeless. (The code in 1947 would never have permitted a successful escape from prison.) And Cronyn is a kind of Nazi figure. He's smooth and ingratiating when necessary but his real character is revealed during a hair-raising scene in which he tries to get Sam Levene to spill the beans about the escape plans. Cronyn interrogates Levene and taunts him, while Wagner is playing on the phonograph. When Levene isn't forthcoming, Cronyn pulls down the shades, dismisses the witnesses, and begins beat the handcuffed Levene with a rubber hose.The inmates are all essentially good guys. Flashbacks fill in their back stories. They were either dumb and impulsive or committed a crime to help their marriages or to get money for a girl friend's operation. Either the writer didn't know much about inmate culture or that culture has changed a great deal in the years intervening since its release.At one point, the weakling warden has an interesting, if brief, exchange with the placid Cronyn. Cronyn remarks, "You set the rules, but I have to enforce them." He's right about his awkward position. He belongs to a class that the sociologist Robert Park called "marginal people," along with top sergeants, head nurses, and factory foremen -- not management and not quite labor. Of course, not every person occupying a marginal status needs to caress his rubber hose with such relish.There are a couple of murders, a suicide, and a riot. There's plenty of action. At the same time, prison movies are by their nature depressing. The clothing and surroundings are so bleak and grating that, no matter what happens, one's spirits sink.