Brute Force

One of the best prison movies ever made.Jules Dassin's direction is so strong ,so precise,so mind-boggling it packs a real wallop.Hume Cronyn gives a subdued but extremely scary portrayal of a sadistic brute.Always in a suave voice,always saying "I want to help you",there's only one way for him:the hard one.Burt Lancaster is equally efficient as a tough inmate .But the whole cast cannot be too highly praised.

The cast and credits read :"the women from outside" .There are four flashbacks which really fit into the movie.All of them last barely two or three minutes but they could provide material for four other movies. The first one (Flossie's ) verges on farce ,it is the comic relief of a desperate movie and we need it!Then the "fur coat" segment which is some kind of Cinderella turned film noir.The third one,perhaps the less interesting (everything is relative!), features Yvonne De Carlo as an Italian girl during the war the former soldier was in love with .And finally Burt Lancaster's story, he tries to find money to pay his girlfriend's operation.

These flashbacks are not gratuitous:all that is left to those men is memories .Besides,the last line tells us something like that:"nobody will escape!nobody!" More than ten years before ,Dassin had shown what French director Jacques Becker would do in his famous prison movie "le trou" (1960) : the prison as a metaphor of the human condition.

There are lots of scenes which will leave you on the edge of your seat.My favorite scene: the informer's death while Lancaster is securing his alibi with the doc.But the final is awesome too,something apocalyptic.

Remember how brutal Caged was, and how it exposed the filth and danger in women's prisons? Check out Brute Force, the male counterpart which came out three years earlier. Burt Lancaster is the lead, personifying the title in only his second movie. He's in prison, alongside Charles Bickford, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, John Hoyt, Jack Overman, Whit Bissell, and Howard Duff. Their prison cell, R17, is shown so often the film might as well have been titled after it, because the cell itself seems to become another character. Each man has a different story about how he became incarcerated, and through flashbacks, we learn the circumstances, and in some cases, the innocence of the men behind bars. It's a very interesting story, and even though the women billed in the opening credits, Ann Blyth, Yvonne De Carlo, and Ella Raines, have a mere five minutes apiece on the screen, it's effective since the movie is about the men and their deep desire for freedom.

Inside, the prison is run by spineless warden Roman Bohnen, who kowtows to the sadistic, manipulative guard Hume Cronyn. Art Smith plays the prison doctor, but since he's chronically drunk, his wisdom isn't taken seriously. As the movie starts, some of the prisoners play along to get on Hume's good side, but when conditions grow worse, they start planning an escape. If you like famous prison movies like The Great Escape and Escape from Alcatraz, you owe it to them to watch the grandfather of prison-break movies, Brute Force. This is a heavy movie, and at times very upsetting, but it's incredibly exciting and remarkably raw for its time. Strong parallels from The Shawshank Redemption have been drawn to Brute Force, and with good reason. If you liked that masterpiece, try out Burt Lancaster's version.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to violence, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

In the Westgate Penitentiary, the Warden A. J. Barden (Roman Bohnen) is a weak man, and the institution is actually ruled by the ambitious and sadistic Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyon), who uses violence, fear and treachery to control the prisoners. After the suicide of Tom Lister (Whit Bissell), one of the inmates of cell R17, provoked by Captain Munsey, the prisoners loses their privileges and rest of the group of cell R-17 leaded by Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) is sent to hard and insalubrious work in the drain pipe. Joe uses a successful strategy of war trying to escape, attacking the tower of the penitentiary from the outside with his men, and from inside with the team leaded by the leader Gallagher (Charles Bickford). However, the plan fails, ending in a bloodshed.

Sixty years after the original release date, "Brute Force" is still a great movie of prison. The story is very well constructed, with flashbacks showing the connection of three inmates with his women. The violence is not explicitly disclosed like in the present days, but the cruelty of Captain Munsey can be understood even by the most naive viewer. The direction of Jules Dassin is outstanding with many memorable scenes. Yvonne De Carlo has a minor participation, but a strong role. The moralist message in the end, when Dr. Walters (Alt Smith) tells that nobody can escape from penitentiaries, does not spoil this great movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Brutalidade" ("Brutality")

Burt Lancaster and cellmates plot a daring breakout. Okay, sounds like a thousand other prison movies, but what makes this the top of the prison genre are the elements. Watching the characters in this gem is like staring down a cobra- they're so fascinating. There are the unique cellmates: meak accountant Whit Bissell driven over the edge, a learned, elder prisoner (Charles Bickford) the tough Burt Lancaster, etc. etc. Most memorable is Hume Cronyn (his greatest film performance) as the soft spoken, neat-nick psychotic Captain Munsey, a prison official who takes so much delight in beating prisoners, he plays his favorite music and strips to his t-shirt during beatings! Grand screenwriting by future director Richard Brooks. Cellmates have only one wall decoration, a picture of a glamour girl. She reminds each cellmate of a different woman who caused them to do time. The dialog crackles loudly: (Sample- Bickford to Lancaster about a cellmate plotting a break: "He said next Tuesday is the day of the break. He's been saying that about every Tuesday for the last twelve years. Twelve years from now, he'll be saying the same thing....") Hey Universal, put this wonderful classic on VHS!

BRUTE FORCE This intense, powerful drama stars Burt Lancaster as Collins, a prisoner who's got to find a way out, and Hume Cronyn as the sadistic Captain Munsey, who delights in torturing the inmates. Cronyn is masterful -- cast wonderfully out of character, his slick, soft delivery takes on a skin-crawling menace. Lancaster is appropriately hard and driven, but the fact that he's breaking out to be by his dying girlfriend's side seems facile. The weakest elements of this film are the flashbacks to how his cellmates got locked up. (It seems obvious these scenes are contrived to introduce women into an otherwise all-male cast.) It turns out none of them are really bad guys except Lancaster, who appears to be some kind of gangster. We aren't given much insight into his character; we know he's smart and a leader, but he's clearly got a tendency toward violence. Ultimately, however, it's not about how they got there, but who they are when they get there. It's about what pushes a man past his breaking point and what happens after that. Weaknesses aside, this is a worthwhile, thought-provoking film with excellent performances all around.