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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - B 3 Mins Read

    Brubaker (1980)

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    BrubakerΒ is based on the real-life experiences of Tom Murton, who worked as a warden in a primitive Arkansas prison in 1968, improving conditions and irritating the corrupt prison officials until his discovery of three bodies buried on prison property led to his dismissal.

    He hasn’t worked in the prison system since, and it took him almost eleven years to get his story to the screen.

    It’s a harrowing story, made even grimmer and more terrifying by the filmmaker’s poetic license, and the first hour or so (during which Redford pretends to be a prisoner, to get a firsthand glimpse of prison life) is as shattering as anything you’re likely to see in a movie.

    Sleeping in filthy beds that become available only when someone dies in them, sitting on floors of mud, kept awake by homosexual rapes all around him, forced to watch the worst beatings since slavery was outlawed, Brubaker witnesses enough cruel and beastly punishments to make the Black Hole of Calcutta look like Disneyland.

    After Redford admits his true identity, he shaves, dons a plaid shirt and clean jeans, and becomes the same Redford who could just as well be lecturing at Yale, campaigning for ecology, or running for political office.

    Redford, or Brubaker (it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two, which is a credit to the actor but ends up backfiring on the movie itself) encounters as much graft, corruption, and hostility on the outside as he does in the barracks.

    The guards hoard the food supply, reselling it to the inmates for a price; the state police are on the take; the trustees are sabotaging the prison crops; the local businessmen are ripping off the prison and the prison board members are making a profit.

    Brubaker makes the prisoners feel like human beings, but he won’t play the politician’s crooked games, so he loses because he won’t compromise his principles. It’s a perfect role for Redford – the brave, noble hero fighting the system.

    Stuart Rosenberg has done a fine job of documenting the details, there is authenticity in W. D. Richter’s screenplay (even though some of the events have been manufactured) and the actual Ohio prison locales lend an almost documentary realism to the grisly events.

    Fine, concerned performances abound – by Redford, Jane Alexander as a state government employee with high connections, Yaphet Kotto as a tough prisoner who is the last to come around to Brubaker’s ideas, and Murray Hamilton as a slimy politician.

    BrubakerΒ is an honest attempt to examine the evils and injustices in the prison system, but ultimately the film holds no real excitement and no thrill of new discovery.

    Redford is so self-righteous, so determined, and so unyieldingly heroic that there’s nothing left in his performance for the viewer to discover. His jaw is so set you can almost hear the bones crack.

    Henry Brubaker
    Robert Redford
    Lillian Gray
    Jane Alexander
    Richard ‘Dickie’ Coombes
    Yaphet Kotto
    John Deach
    Murray Hamilton
    Larry Lee Bullen
    David Keith
    Walter
    Morgan Freeman
    C.P. ‘Woody’ Woodward
    M. Emmet Walsh
    Roy Purcell
    Matt Clark
    Abraham Cook
    Richard Ward
    Rory Poke
    Albert Salmi
    Rogers
    Wilford Brimley
    Huey Rauch
    Tim McIntire
    Zaranska
    Jon Van Ness
    Carol
    Linda Haynes
    Eddie Caldwell
    Everett McGill
    Wendel
    Val Avery

    Director
    Stuart Rosenberg

    Video

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