Brute Force (1947)

The Worst Film Ever

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Stunning nail biter of a film, and surely one of the best prison break movies ever made.Burt Lancaster stars as a convict who organizes an escape from a maximum security prison. Hume Cronyn is the evil warden who gets wind of the plan and tries to stop it. The film is tough, muscular, and brutal, and it fires on all cylinders for the length of its running time. I could muster up some minor quibbles if pressed, like the fact that Cronyn's character is taken a little too far, or that some unnecessary flashbacks of the events that led the various men to their prison sentences slow the momentum down a bit. But these quibbles are very minor, because the flashbacks don't slow the film down that much -- I'm sure they were included to give the men a little bit of extra rooting interest, which I didn't need myself. I was already rooting for them because....well, just because I was. But they do flesh out the characters a bit and provide the actors with a bit more to do than look hot and tense. And as for Cronyn -- yes, he takes sadistic to pretty spectacular extremes, but it's then that much more satisfying to see him taken down at the end.This film is a winner.Grade: A

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.

Jules Dassin is best remembered for his seminal heist movie Rififi, which he made in Europe following his Hollywood blacklisting. Before this, in the immediate postwar period, this American director made a series of high-quality noir films on the other side of the pond, one of which was this bold prison break drama from 1947.The plot focuses on Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) and the inmates of intimate cell R17. Sick of their ill treatment by the cruel Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn), and conscious of the impotence of Chief Barnes (Roman Bohnen) as well as the hopelessness of decent-yet-drunk Doctor Walters (Art Smith), they plan to take matters into their own hands, overthrow the governance, and escape.The film earns its title. This is a brutal, bleak, and violent yarn by the standards of any era. But it was particularly shocking at the time – not least, perhaps, because it sets aside the basic crime-doesn't-pay moral and asks the audience to sympathise wholly with the prisoners and hate the guards. This is achieved by portraying the prisoners as plucky underdogs. No trashy exploitation here, but something closer to the conscientious social outrage of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. Lancaster's performance doesn't approach Brando, but the style is similarly smouldering. Repressed rage; the power of the trodden man waiting to be unleashed.The theme of power is personified by Munsey. "Kindness is actually weakness," is his mantra. Hume Cronyn is gloriously slimy in the role. Munsey is the most complex character, embodying the dangerously contained ambitions of the middle manager. Meanwhile, Doc Walters reckons the prison system is inherently flawed; that men emerge more broken than when they arrived. Then there's Overlord Barnes, weary and anxious and without strategy, responding to mass unrest by threatening to withdraw privileges from all, suppressing the inmates' individuality from the distant comfort of his office. The prison is run by this dysfunctional trio. No wonder a breakout is imminent.The good guys are the chums of R17. Some are embellished in flashback. There's the tragic story of the man – reminiscent of poor cuckolded George Peatty in Kubrick's The Killing – who steals three grand to buy his materialistic wife a fur coat. Another wound up in the slammer after taking the rap when his wife shot her father dead to save their marriage. It's all melodramatic; all about trouble with women; all great black 'n' white storytelling with a few shades of grey. As for Joe, his gal needs an operation to fix her crippled legs, but she's not going for the operation until he's out. We get to see the sentimentality behind the main man's stony façade.So, R17 is populated by lovable rogues and victims of circumstance. The rawness of Dassin's picture – its relative naturalism for the time – ensures that the setup isn't hopelessly idealised, but it is certainly romanticized, which is something that's matched by the rich aesthetic. The film looks glorious. The external sets are plausibly looming and stark, recalling the Expressionist roots upon which noir was built. The drama is frequently shot from awkward angles, giving the sense of confined spaces and enhancing the releasing power of the flashbacks. It's memory that sets the men free.Finally, there is genuine tension and excitement in the final breakout sequence. Its violence is earned and its outcome is startling. It's a fittingly intense climax to a film that grips early and tight and doesn't let go. This is persuasive, fierce filmmaking.

Burt Lancaster has great stage presence, and it's interesting to see how the other prisoners pay obeisance to him, but most of this movie made me want to escape from it. Hume Cronyn's sadistic prison guard was so repulsive I finally had to fast-forward through the scene in which he pummeled a handcuffed inmate. Did anyone else find it peculiar that each of the plotters had weird relationships with women? One is hoodwinked by a moll, another goes to jail for trying to buy his wife's love with a stolen mink coat, yet another takes the rap for a father-killer, and Burt lusts after a lady in a wheelchair.I did admire the performance of Art Smith as an alcoholic prison doctor who may simultaneously have been an inmate (it wasn't really clear). This exceedingly odd film is definitely not a date movie.