above. How about the bleeding bullet hole in Burt's back as he fights with his new warden? And the strength he shows when tossing him off the tower. The small stuff helps the realism of this oldie!Burt, you were so cool! I wish you had accepted the Ben Hur and Patton role you were offered!

been an extremely powerful and hard-hitting film, and it remains so to this day. For anyone who appreciates movie-making at its best, this is hard to beat.

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.

Charles Bickford Gallagher and lady support shown in excellent flashbacks from Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines and Anita Colby. We open in the pouring rain at the monolithic gates of Westgate Penitentiary, Dassin's camera looking up at the gate like some foreboding warning, William Daniels black and white photography is stark and making its point, all this as Miklos Rozsa's score thunders in our ears, it's clear that this is going to be a mean and moody prison picture.So it proves to be, sure all the formula traits that lace most prison films are in here, but Dassin and his team have managed to harness an oppressive feel to put us the viewer within the walls of Westgate as well. This is a bleak place, there are six men to a prison cell, their only chance of staying sane is memories of loved ones and a unified spirit to not be put upon by the vile Munsey, we are privy to everything, we ourselves are part of the furniture. Brute Force thankfully doesn't disappoint with its ending, the tension has been built up perfectly, the mood is set, so when the ending comes it's explosive and a truly fitting finale to what has been a first rate prison drama. 9/10

suffer the deep level of despair which comes from the knowledge that there's absolutely nothing they can do to improve their circumstances, as even the prospects for rehabilitation and parole are taken away from them. The sheer desperation of these men who can't get away from either their pasts or their current tribulations inevitably creates a need for an escape plan to be developed and Joe Collins Burt Lancaster , the leader of the convicts in cell R17 is a man who has more reasons than most for wanting to get out.Joe is released from a spell in solitary at the same time as the body of one of his cell-mates who was a victim of the regime's evil practices is being taken away from the prison. Joe's wheelchair bound wife is also suffering from a life threatening illness and is not prepared to go ahead with the urgent surgery she needs unless Joe is with her. He wants Gallagher Charles Bickford , who is the editor of the prison newspaper, to help with the organisation of a breakout but Gallagher refuses because he believes that he has a chance of being given parole in the near future.The prison Warden's methods are criticised by his superiors and he's swiftly replaced by Captain Munsey Hume Cronyn who is the sadistic Chief Guard whose lust for power has finally won him the top job. The practices that Munsey puts into operation to achieve greater discipline include the indefinite suspension of parole hearings and this leads to Gallagher changing his mind and getting on board with the attempt to escape.Dr Walters Art Smith is the ageing prison physician who drinks too much and despairs about the amount of brutality that he sees. When he openly accuses Munsey of torturing the prisoners, he gets struck to the floor by his disdainful colleague in an act which highlights both Munsey's intolerance and his pleasure in inflicting pain.The escape plan is eventually put into action but because Munsey had already been tipped off by one of the inmates, the element of surprise is lost and what follows turns out to be an incredibly violent full scale riot with the men on both sides suffering a huge number of injuries and fatalities and the whole endeavour proving to be an absolute failure.The characters in this story are very memorable. Joe is tough, full of controlled anger and completely focused on what he wants to achieve. Munsey is vicious, merciless and manipulative as he fosters and uses a network of informers and even uses psychological methods which, in one case, leads to an inmate's suicide. Gallagher's discretion, integrity and diplomacy gain him the respect of both the guards and the convicts and Dr Walters is a humanitarian whose disenchantment with the system is profound. Lancaster and Cronyn are outstanding in their roles and the performances of the rest of the cast are also consistently good.The allegorical nature of the story is strong as it shows Munsey as a dictatorial monster who plays Wagner recordings as he tortures a helpless prisoner and some of the Nazi imagery is also quite striking. Bearing in mind the timing of the movie's release and the political leanings of its director, none of this is particularly shocking. What is more surprising is how this kind of depiction of the prison's officials was sanctioned under the strict censorship constraints which were in force at the time."Brute Force" isn't a story of good guys and bad guys as not all the guards are bad and clearly not all the convicts are good. Both groups are perpetrators of appalling brutality as the prisoners' punishment of stool pigeons provides a couple of the most sickeningly cruel scenes in the film. What it really illustrates most strongly is how much hopelessness the people in the institution feel, how futile the self perpetuating brutality is and how inevitable it is that to quote the philosophical Dr Walters "nobody escapes, nobody ever really escapes".

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.

a realistic picture by any means. Or any narcotics offenders among them either and that was changing right around the time Brute Force was made.Still director Jules Dassin gets some great performances out of his cast. From the jailer's point of view, the politics of the penal system never got as good a portrayal until Robert Redford's Brubaker came along over 30 years later. I like the performances of weak and burned out warden Roman Bohnen, the alcoholic doctor Art Smith and of course Hume Cronyn who got his career role out of this film.Once seen you will not forget Hume Cronyn as Captain Munsey. He is a type who unfortunately is attracted to corrections work, a brutal sadist who probably tortures animals in his spare time. Now that is not an indictment of all prison guards not by any means. Still people like that do make their way into that line of work.Which raises an interesting question. Being a corrections officer is one of the toughest jobs going. You are in fact going outnumbered among a group of very antisocial people and going among them unarmed. For your own survival you have to establish a reputation for toughness and fast. Bearing the necessity for that in mind, is there a point where that job will turn you into a Captain Munsey? Brute Force coming out as it did post World War II with the holocaust discovery fresh in everyone's mind is disturbing and terrifying. How easy is it to slide in brutality when you have that kind of authority over people? I think that's the question director Jules Dassin is asking of his audience.The coordinated prison break at the climax of the film still almost sixty years later still has a powerful jolt to it. With the odds very much stacked against them the men still do it, even after they know they've been informed on. You won't forget it or Brute Force.

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"