Review of Brute Force (1947) by Paul Z — 03 Mar 2009

Jules Dassin's hard-hearted dramatic thriller opens on a gloomy, rainy morning. Prisoners are crammed four to a small cell and watch out the window as Burt Lancaster's quiet, internally intense protagonist leaves solitary confinement, angry, and seriously contemplating escape. The warden is under strenuous pressure to enhance discipline. The doctor cautions that the prison is a powder keg and that there is not much rehabilitation happening.

This intense drama casts Hume Cronyn cleverly out of character, his slick, soft delivery takes on the menace of a cold, calculating disciplinarian. Lancaster is fittingly brutal and single- minded, but that he's breaking out to be with his failing girlfriend seems too easy.

The movie's limitations are the flashbacks depicting how his cellmates wound up sitting there with him. They are entertaining, yes, but they provide solace, which is exactly what a prison movie must avoid, especially a prison movie about an escape from a prison. Brute Force was not as memorable as Dassin's other films noir like Rififi or Night and the City because it was not claustrophobic, and it needed to be in order to be impactful. However, it does have a darkness and relentless depiction of violence and the ruthlessness of authoritarian abuse, and that edge induces its provocative degree of entertainment value.