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Brute Force (Universal), a Mark Hellinger production, stars Burt Lancaster, but is not otherwise to be compared with Hellinger's The Killers. The Killers may have been hammy, but it was grade-A ham, so adroitly served up that the picture got on several of last year's ten-best lists. Brute Force is a prisoner of all the old jailbreak cliches. There is the decent but weak warden (Roman Bohnen) who can't control his mild but maniacal head guard (Hume Cronyn), a sadist who plays Wagner while softening up a prisoner with a rubber hose. There is the boozy prison doctor (Art Smith) with a heart of gold and some of the crummiest "philosophy" ever scraped out of the bottom of a cracker barrel. There is the stool pigeon who is efficiently murdered by his fellow convicts; and the steady old hand (Charles Bickford) who grimly joins the rebels when his parole is canceled. The one comparative novelty--Calypso Singer Sir Lancelot, improvising verses about the prisoners--seems like stale ham, too.

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