Movie #209 Brute Force *1947*

Burt Lancaster - Joe Collins
Hume Cronyn - Captain Munsey
Jules Dasin (Director)

Can Burt Lancaster do any wrong?  Sure he doesn't have the greatest range in the world, but the characters he plays he fully inhabits and makes his own.   In Brute Force he plays an inmate in an over-crowded prison.  The prison is ran by the warden, but really it is Captain Munsey that calls the shots.  He rules with a deceptive sneakiness.  Lancaster tries to break out of the prison with the help of his cell mates and they run into some opposition. Munsey was played almost like a psychopath.  He is at least bi-polar.  Cronyn was great in the mostly understated performance.

I was expecting another movie and another performance similar to that of Lancasters in The Birdman of Alcatraz.  I was presently surprised to find that was not the case.  They are two very different films.  One would not have to look very hard to find more than a few similarities between Brute Force and another prison film, The Shawshank Redemption.   Escape plans through drain pipes, bully guards, prison clicks and gangs, and the calm old man.  In Shawshank it was Brooks the librarian.  In Brute Force it is Dr. Walters the drunk.

The opening score of this film took no time to introduce this film as a serious dissection of prison life.  Then the movie introduces a charming yet annoying character call Calypso who sings everything he says.  It is a great Dassin moment.  This frivolity in the middle of all this anguish.  Dassin then proceeds to slowly introduce all the characters and their back story.  This was an element of the film that I could have lived without.

Using flashbacks (and the woman on the inmates calendar to channel them) we are introduced to the women that were part of these men's lives before they were incarcerated.  Many of these women were either directly blamed for the imprisonment of the men, or they played a role in so.  I felt like this took away some of the tension and claustrophobia that was building by keeping the camera in an over-stuffed jail cell.

The ending is a strange thing.  First, I should remind you that this film was made in the hey day of the Hayes Code.  No film would have been allowed to show how to escape from a prison per the code.  Not only that anyone that commits an immoral act must receive punishment equal to that of the offense.  All these restrictions made for a clever final act and some very impressive "what's going on behind the scenes" moments.  The very final shot is that of the Dr breaking the 4th wall and pleading with viewers never to try to escape from prison because no one ever makes it.  While it felt very tacked on and I'm sure some executive had it placed there as a sort of insurance plan, it's charm shines though.

While this film contained many Dassin signature elements I found Brute Force to be the least cinematic expressive of all of his films that I have seen so far.  Still I found it to be very enjoyable and I am sure I will be revisiting it later.  I give Brute Force ★★★1/2.