1947 Directed by Jules Dassin
Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?
Burt Lancaster Hume Cronyn Charles Bickford Yvonne De Carlo Ann Blyth Ella Raines Anita Colby Sam Levene Jeff Corey John Hoyt Jack Overman Roman Bohnen Sir Lancelot Vince Barnett Jay C. Flippen Richard Gaines Frank Puglia James Bell Howard Duff Art Smith Whit Bissell James O'Rear Paul Bryar Gino Corrado Al Ferguson Jack Gordon John Harmon Herbert Heywood Tom Steele Show All…
Zelle R 17 Brute Force, Груба сила, Brutal magt, Zelle R17, Fuerza bruta, Les Démons de la liberté, כוח גס, Forza bruta, 真昼の暴動, 잔인한 힘, Brutalna siła, Brutalidade, Грубая сила, Med våldets rätt, Kaba Güç, 血溅虎头门
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FranceTP
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Netherlands12
Germany16
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UK12
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So was feeling a bit rough and didn't fancy subtitles, so guess Punk Samurai and the Katsuhito Ishii box set needs to wait.
I was always a little disappointed in Lancaster's late 60 European jaunts he never worked with Dassin again. Shame as he could have worked as Raf Vallone in Phaedra, possibly not the best fit for 10:30 Summer, but could have subbed for Akim Tamiroff in Topkapki.
Also this features both Ella Rains and Yvonne De Carlo, you cannot more NOIR that that right?
So I kinda forgot how hardcore this is in places, considering the period. The murder in the workshop, with the excellent sound-design of the rhythmic clanking, then the flamethrowers and then the press!
2nd…
Between the sadistic guard captain and the intense escape sequence, this could have been a great film. Unfortunately, it wastes a lot of time on cheezy backstories for several of the prisoners that all seem to suggest they all went to prison for love. It seemed like a cop out after the brutality the film presented to show these as misunderstood, romantic men who just went too far for their women.
Still, Munsey is a vicious villain. This film features some fairly gruesome moments of violence and death, and Munsey is at the root of all of them, one way or another. He's menacing, cold, and prim. He would not have been out of place in a film about Nazis.…
There's little ambiguity to be found in the world of Brute Force: men are either weak or strong; trustworthy or turncoats; robustly heterosexual or snivelingly gay and dangerously repressed.
Burt Lancaster, of course, is the representation of everything positive the film and its environment have to offer: despite being a criminal who professes to care about no one but himself, he's in fact a saint who is in love with a wheelchair-bound innocent (who he loves so much he ... lies to her about everything?), desirous of escape not for freedom itself, but in order to persuade her to get the surgery she needs.
Hume Cronyn, meanwhile, in a justly remembered performance, plays the prison's chief of guards with a…
homoerotic film noir about shirtless hunks trading stories, maybe being in prison in the 40s doesn't seem that bad at all (with burt lancaster in the same cell as me)
all jokes aside though, have i told you guys how much i love prison films?
"Nobody escapes. Nobody ever really escapes."
Elements of the film's melodrama are certainly more compelling than others, especially in regards to the occasionally uninspired roots of specific inmates prior to the big house. Yet Brute Force remains a consistently engaging, genre-motivated look behind the bars of the United States' justice system. The noir narrative in play thrives within the oppressive setting and patchwork of world-weary attitudes, trappings of the style wholly embraced by Jules Dassin's sturdy and sharp filmmaking, the hard-boiled writing from Richard Brooks, and an appropriately rugged Burt Lancaster pitted against Hume Cronyn's despotic Capt. Munsey. The talent is undeniable, and their work together is a thunderstorm of rage and slick grit.
What Brute Force may lack in…
Prison changes a man, for better or worse.
What makes Jules Dassin’s ‘get out of the pen or die trying’ flick tick with the bleeding heart of time run dry is this unshaken sense of contemplation for life on the outside.
For time-grizzled Joe Collins and his motley crew of trusty cell-chums, everything on the inside is a reminder of what you used to have. With every interaction, a deeply human admonition of how distance colours perspective by the second. In an egg timer that never seems to want to budge an inch.
Men who want nothing more than to grow or shape up into the idea of the model citizen, do their time and return to a taste of normalcy.…
"I know what I want to know. The rest doesn't matter."
A good and gritty noir viewing for a drizzly night: no storm or grimy prison detail will stop ticking time bomb Burt Lancaster and his equally desperate buddies (including a particularly baby-faced Howard Duff in his film debut) from plotting to break out of the pen, not even sadistic captain of the guards Hume Cronyn; naturally, chaos ensues and violent vengeance consumes all. Bleak, bleak, bleak. Noted, incidentally, a pretty obvious queer reading illuminated by critic David Cairns: "What makes the conflict more than usually juicy is Cronyn’s decision to play his role quiet, sibilant and coded gay, and [Jules] Dassin’s collaboration in presenting him with a good bit…
"Why not? We're buried, ain't we? Only thing is we ain't dead."
It's a movie about a violent prison escape and a massive inmate riot, so you might think the "brute force" of the title is directed at the prisoners, but no. The "brute force" is the sadistic head of security who tortures inmates both physically and psychologically, beating one almost to death and talking another into committing suicide.
The prisoners, on the other hand, are all given humanizing romantic flashbacks to their shared fantasy of a safe and cozy domestic life with their lovers. And when the weak warden leaves and the head of security takes over the prison, these decent men find their fates solely in the hands…
Jules Dassin made five of the very best genre films in the forties and fifties and Brute Force is the first of them. The action takes place inside a prison where a group of prisoners, tired of living under the rule of the sadistic Captain Munsey, plan a daring escape. The film very much focuses on the characters - the main ones of which are very well defined. Some of the supporting cast have their backstories fleshed out with flashback scenes, which vary in quality, and overall are the only real misstep in a grizzled noir with a quality script and some great set pieces - culminating in an action packed ending. There's some real dark moments here too -…
A group of criminals are trapped in a prison where the authorities are arguably worse than prisoners themselves.
Not gonna lie, when the film started I actually thought I was watching the whole jail section of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Cool Hand Luke. Not only because of the genre, but also many of the performances. Burt Lancaster, as to be expected, steals the show as the sort of leader of group of man trying to find their freedom.
The use of flashbacks to helps audiences understand what lead each and one of our men to that place was great, plus it helped us both hate and sympathize with each, so we get to feel the punches when the ending happens.
All in all, an early example of a prison break movie done right that plays against type while setting some tropes and ideas that will be later used in other pictures within the genre.
"This place is full of pain."
Balances its tendencies towards the nearly-baroque with a horrifying, still-shocking-today dose of brutality. All-time great cinematography, brilliant production design, and seething anger simmering just under the production code trappings. Hits like a punch to the gut 70 years later.
Great prison drama with the always amazing Burt Lancaster. Interesting to see Sam Levene as something other than a cop. And Hume Cronyn as such a cold-hearted SOB.
