PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

evanston_dad "Canon City" (spelled c-a-n-o-n but pronounced as "canyon") is an example of a type of film prominent in the late 1940s: the docudrama. Usually these films had a noirish sensibility and were almost always about gritty subject matter. They were part documentary and part fiction -- filmed on location in actual locales with objective third-party narration, stripped-down production values and a journalistic focus on presenting events matter-of-factly and without superfluous emotion."Canon City" tells the story of a famous prison break from a Colorado penitentiary. The first part of the film gives us a tour of the prison and introduces us to men who were the actual inmates at the time the movie was filmed; the chief warden of the prison likewise plays the warden in the movie. After this extended prologue, actors take over to portray the actual escape and the subsequent manhunt that put families living nearby at risk as the escaped cons used their homes as hideouts.The film is very spare and terse, which is not a criticism from me. It's a refreshing break from the Hollywood melodrama that characterized glossier, studio-backed movies at the time. But the film is SO bare bones that it's difficult to feel strongly one way or the other about it. Its bargain-bin look is a nice compliment to the story it's telling, but one can't help but miss the style that artists who came with a higher price tag might have brought to the same material.Grade: B

Paularoc Corny opening with an off screen narrator, Reed Hadley, telling the audience that the movie is based on a true story and then introducing us to a few of the inmates of the Colorado State Penitentiary. The narrator then has an interview with the actual warden of the prison, Roy Best. Jim Sherbondy is basically a good man but realizing that he has ten long more years to serve for a crime committed while very young agrees to help in a prison break. Sherbondy and eleven other inmates make their break in the dead of winter during a snow storm. The narrative then follows each of the prisoners as they are killed or recaptured. While Scott Brady is very good in the role of Sherbondy, it's Mabel Paige that steals the show. The brief scene where she clobbers (I wanted to say "nails") the Jeff Corey character with a hammer is priceless. She is so expressive - both scared and determined at the same time. Interesting enough, the other "regular citizen" hero of the movie is also a woman. How refreshing is that? The movie keeps one's interest throughout.

secondtake Canon City (1948)A simple loud warning up front--the first twenty minutes or so is a horrible, stiff, documentary kind of lead-in to the movie proper. When the dramatic action gets going, it becomes fully a movie with suspense, character, speed, and even at times complexity. In fact, you could even fast forward to where you see the buy in the jail cell doing a model of a ship. The stuff before that is not needed. It tells us what we already know about prison, though it seems to use real inmates in brief interviews, as if to set up the later jailbreak as something more tangible and believable. It isn't giving anything away to say that some inmates escape--that's the whole hook of the movie--and then what happens to each group or individual in their attempts to get out of Canon City is what drives the movie in a series of somewhat independent vignettes. The encounters with regular town people in their homes is a little contrived but also has the edge of fear to it, and suspense. It works pretty well, the cops gradually closing in on this or that escapee.The end result is still almost a public relations piece about the prison system, about ordinary Americans who rise up and do heroic things, and about the different kinds of attitudes of the inmates, who are people after all. I actually liked the second half of the movie, even it it wasn't completely original or brilliant. The acting is meant to be believable in a vernacular kind of way, and it is. Give it a look, especially if you like prison flicks.

dougdoepke Noirish docu-drama based on 1947 Colorado State Prison break.The movie's best parts are the location shots in and around the Colorado State Pen. We get at least a flavor of prison routines and the small town atmosphere. At the same time, the chase sequence at the Royal Gorge provides a scenic, if fictionalized, passage. Then too, ace photographer Alton's studio recreation of the actual winter-time blizzard lends good noirish atmosphere. There's also some tension around convict Schwartzmiller's home invasion; otherwise, the movie's a pretty routine slice of thick ear.To me, the screenplay surrounding the break and its aftermath seems muddled. Scenes follow in no particular developmental order. Characters are glimpsed and then dropped. It may be that writer Wilbur felt constrained by the film's factual basis and hurry-up schedule. After all, the movie wrap-up came only four months (January-May) after the breakout itself. (Contrast this rather disjointed narrative with the streamlined smoothness of the fictional, albeit thematically similar, Crashout {1955}.)As a youngster growing up a few miles from Canon City, I still have a recollection of the hubbub surrounding the breakout. The name Sherbondi suddenly became a household alarm, though I'm not sure he was the sympathetic character of the screenplay. Guns abruptly sprouted across the Arkansas (river) Valley like deer season. Speaking of those memorable few days, I'm glad the movie re-creates the blizzard that certainly hampered the getaway. That rural part of the state seldom made Denver news, let alone national headlines. So it was a pretty big deal for us living there. (In passing--- Warden Roy Best, featured in the movie, later suffered big professional damage when his liberal use of a whipping post for unruly prisoners got statewide exposure.) Choppy narrative and personal recollections aside, the film remains an interesting example of noirish docu-drama, which the results here strongly resemble.