ThiefHott Too much of everything

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

DigitalRevenantX7 Tuna boat skipper Joaquin Shannon is enjoying his best mate's bucks party (he is engaged to Joaquin's sister) when his own fiancée Joan's brother shows up to pass on his father's hostility to Joaquin's proposal to him marrying Joan. Joaquin kicks him out of the bar but a mysterious man kills the brother & flees. Thinking that the groom might have killed him (since he was drunk & asleep next to the corpse) Joaquin decides to take the rap. Convicted of manslaughter, he is sent to prison for ten years but told that he will get out after a year if he keeps his nose clean. Once on the inside, Joaquin does his best to mind his own business. But when a cheap thug named Red Kincaid returns to prison after a spell outside, Joaquin's life gets harder. Red decides to ruin Joaquin's hopes of parole by taunting him into a fight, which he succeeds due to Joaquin's easy temper. But Joaquin has the last laugh when he singlehandedly foils Red's daring escape attempt. Given parole at last, Joaquin tries to adjust to civilian life. But Jean's father does his best to derail his career options. When Red finally manages to escape the prison, he forces Joaquin to join him on a little boat trip to Ecuador.Barton MacLane must have some kind of record for appearing in the most prison films. Besides Prison Break, he had appeared in the following prison films – San Quentin (1937), I Was a Convict (1939), Mutiny in the Big House (1939), Men Without Souls (1940), a different San Quentin in 1946 & finally Jail Breakers in 1955. With that kind of track record he must have had some good experience playing convicts.Prison Break is something of a morality tale of life in prison, although the title is somewhat inaccurate – MacLane doesn't actually take part in any prison escape (although he foils one himself) & the actual successful escape takes place offscreen. Instead, it's more of a story on how a man takes some rash & very poor choices to protect his friends & finds himself in almost perpetual trouble with the law. First, his fiancée's father objects to him marrying his daughter, which causes the woman's brother to try to stop him but ends up being killed by a stranger who flees the scene. Second, he takes the rap to protect a friend he believes caused the death, causing him to go to jail for a decade but with the option of parole if he stays clean in jail, which is going to be impossible with the prison heavy after him. Third is after he gets his parole, where his fiancée's father tries to keep him out of work, forcing him into a confrontation with the escaped heavy, who is finally revealed (SPOILER ALERT) to be the man whose actions in killing the woman's brother that landed MacLane in jail. The film is not always totally convincing but is pretty realistic, MacLane does his best to make the material work & the 1930s production values add some sort of modest thriller mechanics to the film.

mark.waltz Moderately decent B drama about a hard working fisherman wrongly accused of murder who ends up in prison, gets a parole, which means jack squat when he tries to find a job. Barton MacLane isn't traditional leading man material, but kept getting leads in B's throughout the late 1930's into the mid 1940's. Sort of a second choice to roles that didn't go to Charles Bickford, he's a dependable character actor who rose above supporting roles. He's supported by Glenda Farrell, aka Torchy Blane, playing his devoted fiancé who stands by him even though her abusive father and brute brother vow to keep them apart. It's fast moving and truthful, but just one of many on the same subject. Good waterfront scenery and a believable prison break are the highlights. When MacLane tries to take a job out of the country and is reminded by his parole officer that he's not allowed to leave the state, all I could say is duh, wondering why the writers thought that it would be believable for him to even try. Minor complaint, but it was just too obvious to overlook.

evening1 This surprisingly powerful and compelling film starts weakly with a hackneyed tale of a curmudgeonly father opposing his daughter's choice of a mate.Glenda Farrell's Jean sees the hero behind the burly fisherman with a fascinating face, Barton MacLane, and waits for him through a maddeningly unfair series of arrests and punishments in prison. Shannon is the archetypal Everyman with integrity who just can't catch a break -- until the romantic final scene, when the good guy triumphs and finally gets the girl. The perfect ending is a bit anticlimactic but once in a while a happy conclusion manages to satisfy. A bravura production that I'll not soon forget.

bkoganbing Prison Break finds the two leads of Warner Brothers Torchy Blane series, Barton MacLane and Glenda Farrell, in a serious sociological drama about the dilemma of an ex-convict trying to go straight. Both in and outside of prison MacLane has it really stacked against him.This film was done for Universal Pictures and MacLane plays a captain of tuna fishing boat who's in love with Glenda Farrell. She's a widow with a small son, but for reasons not quite explained her father Victor Kilian has a vicious hatred for MacLane. MacLane also has a sister played by Constance Moore who is in love with Edmund MacDonald who works on MacLane's boat.On his bachelor party night, MacDonald gets good and drunk and later wakes up next to the unconscious body of Edward Pawley who is brother to Farrell and son of Kilian. MacLane says he clocked, but the next day Pawley dies and MacLane is in a jackpot for manslaughter.In prison MacLane's nemesis is Ward Bond who is one vicious thug, usually the kind of part MacLane plays in films. Which is also coincidental because if you recall both MacLane and Bond played partner cops in The Maltese Falcon and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.In the end it all resolves itself a little too neatly. In fact when Bond kills a prison guard during an escape attempt that should have brought the death penalty for him. I'm surprised that Universal Pictures neglected that little fact.Still MacLane gives a really good and sincere performance as a man trapped by circumstances only partly of his own making. He should never have taken the rap, even though he thought it was only for assault. A bit melodramatic and neat still Prison Break is a well made B film from Universal and it was nice to see Barton MacLane as a good guy and hero in this film.