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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Brute Force is a knockout!, 30 October 2004
Author: bscowler from Seattle, WA

I've read recent reviews of this film that condemn it for being "outdated" or not "relevant". Um, hello? This movie is is fifty-seven years old! As such, we are treated to typical 1940s Hollywood stereotypes and acting methods, not to mention references to the recently completed war. Yet, even within the pitfalls of the studio system, this film shines as a great example of film noir.

Director Jules Dassin is brilliant with light, and sets the example for the French "new wave" of cinema. Lighting Burt Lancaster from the side, or from underneath, makes him and the other actors look almost surreal.

Most of the dialogue is "clipped" and preposterous, but films from this era often suffer from this same problem. Yet "Brute Force" retains its original power simply by virtue of the dynamite performances, the stirring score, and the gritty techniques of Dassin.

I had to smile during the scene where Hume Cronyn's character turns up the Wagner on his hi-fi so the guards outside his door won't hear the inmate he's about to beat scream. This was mimicked during David Lynch's ground-breaking TV series "Twin Peaks" when a character turned up his radio before he beat his wife. Of course beating people isn't funny, but seeing obvious references in cinema is always a kick.

I highly recommend "Brute Force" to anyone who appreciates the art of film, great directing, and fine performances.

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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Powerful, dark drama. Great performance by Cronyn., 26 February 1999

Author: KimB-3 from Maryland

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.

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16 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
A Film Most Disturbing, 25 February 2006

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Burt Lancaster in his career made two classic prison story films, Brute Force and Birdman of Alcatraz. Both have their share of fans. Birdman though is much longer and it is solely about Lancaster and his long incarceration. In Brute Force Lancaster heads a good ensemble cast and it is as much about the incarcerators as well as the incarcerated.

One of the things that can't be overlooked about prison films and in this case Brute Force does is that all kinds of anti-social folk go into prison. Just why are they there? Notice there seem to be no sex crime perpetrators in the population, not 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.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Nobody Can Ever Escape From the Prison, 2 September 2007

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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")

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12 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Ahead of It's Time, 19 September 2003
Author: BJJ-2 from Manchester, England

For the era it was made(late 1940's),BRUTE FORCE is surprisingly brutal and vicious in places,pre-dating similar antics from James Cagney two years later in WHITE HEAT. The majority of Hollywood prison movies seem to have riots in them and this is no exception,but BRUTE FORCE has arguably the most explosive of the lot,with tear gas,shootings,and killings galore. Mind you,with a warder as brutal as Hume Cronyn(who sadly died recently)in charge,it's no wonder.His psychological bulling of mild-mannered inmate Whit Bissell leads to the former's suicide,and savage beating of Sam Levene results in near death. The misery,waste,and isolation of prison life is well observed here,with fine performances all round,but especially from Cronyn and Jeff Corey,as a cringing,cowardly informer,both of whom incur the rage of the intense Burt Lancaster.

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13 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
a deeply strange movie, 17 April 2007

Author: paulet from san francisco

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)

"Brute Force" is a prison drama, directed by Jules Dassin, who was soon thereafter blacklisted in Hollywood, went abroad, made "Rififi," married Melina Mercouri, made "Never on Sunday" etc. etc. "Brute Force" dates from 1947, a moment when the Stalinist line on the arts was taking a particularly sharp turn toward the crudest formulas--in that year there was a sharp debate in the CPUSA's cultural magazine, Masses and Mainstream, between the screenwriters Albert Maltz and John Howard Lawson (both of whom later served time in Federal prison as members of the Hollywood Ten) over whether art must always be viewed as a weapon in class struggle. (Maltz suggested maybe not, Lawson insisted yes; the dispute was eventually closed by a declaration from V.J. Jerome that Lawson was right, and Maltz was obliged to engage in "self-criticism" for his Browderite errors.)

So here's Burt Lancaster as prisoner "Joe Collins" (and if the assonance of that name is an accident then I am the Grand Duchess Anastasia.) In a back story we learn that he's serving time for organizing bank robberies (students of Stalin's biography, or legend, please note); now he's masterminding a mass escape. The prison warden (Hume Cronyn), made up to look uncannily like Goebbels, struts around his office in jodhpurs and a black Sam Browne belt; when he gets ready to torture a prisoner for information, though, he strips to the waist--no, I'm not making this up--and puts on a recording of Wagner.

Then we have Charles Bickford, editor of the prison newspaper and clearly cast as the voice of misguided reformism; he opposes the prison break, arguing that publicizing the warden's brutality will eventually win better conditions, but is cruelly betrayed, and comes to see the wisdom of Collinsism. Jeff Corey plays one of Lancaster's subordinates but shows his true colors in a key scene: when Lancaster asks the others what position they want to take up in the actual breakout, Corey answers "I'll go last, to cover our back," which sounds plausible until you realize that the others all give the only right answer, which is "Wherever you want me, Joe." Of course Lancaster immediately grasps that Corey is the traitor, presumably because he displays the capacity for independent thought, and so indeed it proves.

Wait, there's more. There is only one Black prisoner, whose job in the joint is to sweep the floors; known as Calypso (I *swear* I'm not making it up) he sings all his dialog in rhymed couplets. And there's the prison doctor, the spineless petit-bourgeois intellectual, who sympathizes with the prisoners but is bullied into inaction by the warden; he drinks and utters despairing commentary.

Pervading this tale is a misogyny so deep and unquestioned that the filmmakers would probably have been astonished to have it pointed out to them. Yet all the prisoners whose stories we learn are there essentially because of the perfidy, greed, lust, or other vices of women in their lives--all except for Joe, who in a scene calculated to induce whiplash smoothly exits a long black getaway car to a house with a white picket fence, where dwells his sweetheart--a crippled girl, in a wheelchair, her nether parts covered by a thick plaid blanket. He swoops her up in his strong arms and carries her about, doll-like, while she squeals with delight--she is, in other words, completely desexualized and infantile, the only kind of woman (the script seems to be saying) that a man can trust.

The square-up is the ancient device whereby dubious themes or images are cleansed in the last few minutes by some clumsy explanation: it was all a dream, or the lurid images had a sober educational purpose, or some such. But what's the square-up in a Stalinist parable? It's a noir dead end! The prison break goes off the rails, the warden gets his fiery come-uppance but the prisoners don't get out, the state cops retake control with great bloodshed, and the prison doctor gets the last word: "They didn't escape. No one ever escapes." In short Hollywood endorses this bleak Sartrean view by way of trumping the rest of the movie's pitch for the wisdom of Comrade Collins.

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10 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Nothing's OK! Never was ,never will!, 26 February 2006

Author: dbdumonteil

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 effective 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 a lot 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.

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16 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Burt Lancaster-Hume Cronyn Celebrity Deathmatch, 1 September 2000
Author: (dbost@digitas.com) from New York City

Prison movies (and prison TV shows) are a genre unto themselves, and there are many genre requirements:

- a good shiving

- a good shanking

- a machine-shop revenge-shiv-shanking (usu. w/ blow-torches)

- lingering close-ups of cement

- tastefully-filmed male rape (after 1970)

- the insistent stage-whisper, "It's gotta be tonight!"

Well, Jules Dasin's Brute Force has almost all of the above. Burt Lancaster stars as Joe Collins, a hardened con in a cruel penal system who lives for only one hope: escape. Burt's nemesis is Captain Munsey, a sadistic guard played by Mr. Jessica Tandy himself, Hume Cronyn. Now, the very notion that Hume Cronyn could ever pose a physical challenge to Burt Lancaster is silly, so director Dasin wisely keeps them apart for most of the movie, until the extremely violent conclusion.

Lancaster shares a cramped cell with five other convicts, including Charles Bickford and Howard Duff (in his film debut). Their cell is adorned with a calendar featuring a picture of a girl so non-descript that each of the boys can see their own long-lost loves in her face, and we are treated to flashbacks showing how each of these losers got where he is today. Duff's flashback is the best – while a soldier in Italy, he took the rap for a murder committed by his beautiful war-bride, Yvonne De Carlo. Howard Duff with an army-issue machine gun is but one example of how this movie goes above and beyond the usual prison fare.

The preachy scenes involving the prison's resident conscience––I mean doctor––are worth fast-forwarding through (unfortunately those scenes are also genre requirements), and Burt tends to lapse into that sensitive Frankenstein acting that he does so well, but man, what a climax to this movie. It's this life's only opportunity to see a clench-teethed Hume Cronyn firing a gattling gun into an unarmed crowd.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Check the attempted breakout!, 1 April 2001

Author: Andy (alydar21@hotmail.com) from Indianapolis

Ok, ok, I will give away a tad bit of the ending here, but not much. This movie builds decently towards the eventual climactic ending. But wow, what an ending!

Rewind and check the camera shot of Burt giving the go-ahead to begin the escape, and see Jeff Corey (the fink) tied to the front of the tram (and thus first to take the machine gun bullets).

Also don't miss the smoke that comes out the back of Jeff Corey's shirt as he is riddled with those bullets. And it takes a quick eye to catch the guard's shotgun blast actually pierce part of the iron cell bar as he kills Duff from 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!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Hume Cronym's Best Remembered Role Before Old Age, 12 July 2008

Author: theowinthrop from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Tonight Turner Classic Films were showing five films in honor of actor writer Hume Cronym (whose birthday is July 18). Cronym has only been dead now for five years, but he was an impressive character actor in comedy and in drama. I was lucky twenty years ago to see the Broadway production of THE PETITION a two person play Cronym played with his wife and partner Jessica Tandy, and I can vouch he was a crisp and fine a performer on stage as he was in his films.

Captain Muncey is one of the most detestable villains in motion pictures, turning his prison into a private torture chamber, with the apparent acquiescence of his guards (note Ray Teal, his personal guard and assistant). He has his way in the prison due to the weakness of the burned out warden Roman Bohman and the bullying of a political hack from the Governor's office (Richard Gaines) who is impressed by Muncey's claims of the need for discipline. But as the wise but alcoholic doctor (Art Smith) points out, while discipline has a place the Warden has never given an order to Muncey telling him to crucify the prisoners.

It's a rather pitiful prison system we see here, and sad to say it remains a problem. The warden keeps bemoaning his failure to come to grips with rehabilitation and punishment, but he has no real suggestions in him, and he is really more upset about what he will do when he is forced out for the rest of his life. The doctor tries to give a degree of humanity to the prisoners lives (interestingly enough, like the alcoholic doctor played by Dudley Digges in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY), but he is aware that he has no place to work outside the prison he is in either. Muncey, in fact, taunts him as a surgical butcher, suggesting something he did went terribly wrong. Muncey and his guards seem to fall into dominating and assaulting the prisoners at the drop of a hat. When Whit Bissell is walked into accidentally by Cronym in the lunchroom, Teal starts clubbing him until even Cronym points out it was his own fault not Bissell's. Only at one late point in the film, when Cronym is beating up Sam Levene in his locked office, do we see some of the guards react - but none intervene.

The film (well directed by noir specialist Jules Dassin) follows the last week of Cronym's system before it collapses. There have been increasing numbers of prisoners dying because Cronym has purposely put them into unsanitary and deadly work, especially in the main drains of the prison. One prisoner, Burt Lancaster, has refused to crack so far (he has been put in solitary due to a "shiv" being planted on him, with the connivance of Cronym and Teal). He returns to his cell and the prisoner who was the collaborator on this is killed later on in a stunningly good scene in the prison workshop. Lancaster is determined to escape and learns from a dying prisoner that there is a route through the drain. It has to be used in a timed escape that requires a riot in the prison yard and the use of an armed truck. To coordinate Lancaster need the help of the prison trustee (Charles Bickford), but the latter is up for parole.

Lancaster plans the escape with his cell mates (Howard Duff - in his first film, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Jack Overman, and Jeff Corey). In the course of their discussions they each tell stories about their lives, showing that the economic forces of the world frequently force them into crime (Bissell embezzles to help him and his wife; Duff takes the blame for a murder his wife - Yvonne De Carlo - committed to help him when he was being arrested for giving food to the Italians in the war; Hoyt, a colorful confidence man, is robbed with his own gun of the proceeds of a swindle and a visit to the gambling tables by an attractive woman who also steals his car; Lancaster has been keeping his crippled, cancer ridden wife (Ann Blythe) from knowing he is a criminal and prisoner). One gets a feeling that these men did not have to become criminals but were forced into it.

This is the weakness of the film, forgetting how many criminals in prison deserve to be in prison for their actions. As was pointed out in another review on this thread, there are sexual criminals who we never see, and the ones sentenced to death (the film is set in 1947) are never even mentioned. Nor are problems among male or female prisoners in their own prisons dealing with sexual predators among their fellow prisoners (and the guards sometimes). However, one can safely say that no prisoner deserves a set of guards controlled by an ego-maniacal sadist like Cronym's Muncey.

The film was shot shortly after World War II, so it is notable that Muncey likes to play Wagnerian music (so long established as music for Nazis) in his office. In fact, when he beats Sam Levene in his office he has the Wagner music playing loudly to drown Levene's screams (oddly enough the music is not from the "RING" Cycle, but from TANNHAUSER, and it is the "Venusburg" music which was supposed to be sensual!). Still the film shows the cruel, power-mad Captain as an unforgettable villain. He is as aware at the end of Lancaster's plans as he can be - but he is also aware of the warning Art Smith gives him - that power mad people end up being destroyed by their power. In his last few moments (as one sees in the film) Captain Muncey does find out how true this comment is.

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