Review of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) by Devon B — 01 Apr 2010

A fun, light-hearted romp through... ahh, just kidding. This is a gritting, depressing film about the horrors of the chain gang prison camps of the south in the early 20th century. Based on the auto-biographical novel by Robert E.

Burns, the story follows James Allen (Paul Muni), an out-of-work veteran who gets arrested for stealing $5, and is sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. Chained at the leg, he's beaten by guards, hit with chains, and worked nearly to death (in fact, he watches men around him die from this).

Finally, after years of suffering, he manages to escape to Chicago, where he makes a new life for himself. He becomes a successful millionaire, but his new wife begins to make trouble for him. Rather than lose his money, she turns him over to the authorities.

But the Chicago police refuse to extradite him to the south, and it's only after they agree to suspend his sentence after 90 days and give him a clean record that he agrees to turn himself over to them.

But they go back on their word and send him back to the chain gang, this time for an indefinite time. Allen seems driven mad by the prospect, it's not justice they're after but revenge, he says.

Some of the acting is pretty bad, mainly with the brother/preacher and the first wife (but her problem is the corny "gangster" dialogue she spouts off), but Paul Muni is quite good, especially in the scene that closes the movie.

It's a positively eerie moment as he slips into the shadows, driven to the brink of madness. The film is a powerful statement about the injustice in the world, and especially one of the cruel injustices of it's day.