Review: Brute Force

Prison guard Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn) is soft-spoken, but a manipulative sadist whose brutal methods of extracting information from prisoners strike fear in most of them. He’s gunning for the top job, hoping to oust incompetent warden Barnes (Roman Bohnen). The potential fly in his ointment? His cruelty drives a prisoner to suicide, and leads to a planned prison break led by tough prisoner Joe (Burt Lancaster), who loathes Munsey. However, Munsey has an informer amongst the prison break group. Charles Bickford plays a respected imprisoned gangster who is ‘Top Dog’, whilst other prisoners are played by Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, and Howard Duff (his debut film), among others. They all have a moment of reflection on the troubles that brought them to the big house, and to the women waiting for them on the outside. In these flashbacks, their respective women are played by the likes of Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, and Anita Colby.

 

An early Burt Lancaster prison flick, this 1947 Jules Dassin (the excellent noir film “Night and the City” with Richard Widmark) film isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s pretty damn brutal and quite uncompromising for its era. It’d be an even stronger film if screenwriter Richard Brooks didn’t feel the need to break up the prison action with flashbacks that are totally unnecessary and serve to soften the prisoners just a tad too much for my liking (Cronyn’s Munsey is the film’s sole true villain, even the stoolie isn’t irredeemable). Yes, they provide a few actresses with some screen time, but Yvonne De Carlo is the only one of them to stand out, despite barely attempting an Italian accent. These scenes just add an unnecessary soap opera element to something otherwise compellingly harsh and straightforward. It’s a real shame, and one expects more of Brooks, who would go on to much better things as a writer-director (“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Elmer Gantry”, “The Professionals”, “In Cold Blood”).

 

Still, there’s plenty to like here all the same, right from the thunderous music score by Miklos Rozsa (“Double Indemnity”, “Spellbound”, “El Cid”). And as much as the flashbacks are regrettable, Brooks should be commended for giving us what would’ve been at the time a pretty harsh, and critical view of the prison system, and its authoritarians. Being behind bars never seemed to restrict Burt Lancaster as an actor, and just as was the case in the even better “Birdman of Alcatraz”, he is an unmatched physical presence here, despite the limited setting. In just his second starring effort, you can see here why he quickly became a star and icon, the camera truly loves the guy. He has a bitterness and toughness to his characterisation here, and he clearly stands out from the other inmates, though the always excellent Charles Bickford is memorable too. There have been few more reliable character actors in cinematic history than Bickford, who has authenticity that is tough to teach. Outside of the prisoners, Art Smith is rock-solid as the drunk prison doctor (I swear he’s legit drunk at one point, or a damn good actor), Jay C. Flippen is rock-hard as a tough but fair prison guard, whilst diminutive, soft-spoken Hume Cronyn is unusual yet effective casting as the polite but cruel prison guard. He’s clearly no physical match for Lancaster, but what his character does have is power and position, and boy does he use it. You might just find yourself shocked by Cronyn in this film. Normally cast in meek or even weak parts, he plays the worst kind of prison guard in this film and surprisingly brutal at times too. You’ll spot several other familiar faces and names, like Jeff Corey (as a weasel prisoner), Whit Bissell, Howard Duff, and Sam Levene. However I never did spot a young-ish Charles McGraw in a small role. The tough-looking, gravel-voiced hard man isn’t easy to miss, but I have to confess I have no idea where he is here.

 

There’s no doubt that the film is a bit corny, I certainly could’ve done without the calypso crooner inmate played by (no kidding) Sir Lancelot, an actor who appeared in several of the Val Lewton chillers for RKO. He’s a huge irritant here, and a pretty crude stereotype, to be honest. However just when you think the film is getting too corny and clichéd, you get the distraction via prison fight to mask the murder of an inmate, and boy would that have shocked people in 1947. So yeah, the film has dated a bit, but it still packs an occasional wallop, undoubtedly. The action-packed finale is terrifically tough, even though Lancaster doesn’t really require ‘brute force’ to overcome tiny Hume Cronyn, does he? That seems like a bit of an unfair fight to me.

Time hasn’t been entirely kind to this one (Smith’s final to-camera sermon is eye-rolling), but most of the performances are terrific, it’s surprisingly brutal for its time, and the excellent B&W cinematography by William H. Daniels (“Plymouth Adventure”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “The Prize”) is the epitome of stark. It’s somewhat of a B-grade prison break film that just happens to feature a screen icon on the rise. It’s good, though, and if it weren’t for the melodramatic flashbacks, this one could’ve been even better. Brooks’ screenplay is based on a story by Robert Patterson.

 

Rating: B-