Stand-Off might be a more apt title but that’s not going to sell many tickets. After taking over the wing of a prison, not a great deal happens except for character development. As it turns out the threat of a riot is intended merely as a ruse to cover an attempted break-out.
Inmate Cully (Jim Brown) is the first to point out to escape mastermind Red (Gene Hackman) the deficiencies of his plan. For a start, they are in the middle of the desert and without transportation and food, neither of which is handy or arranged, they are likely to find the wilderness a worse prison. Secondly, there’s a hell of a lot of digging to do, a tunnel long enough to allow them to emerge on the other side of the walls.
And thirdly, and most presciently, most of the prisoners don’t give a fig about organizing a break-out. They are simpler souls, wanting to enjoy a brief moment, even if still incarcerated, of freedom, happy to glug down gallons of home-made brew, watch drag acts for entertainment and slit the throats of the guards taken hostage.
It’s ironic that Cully and Red begin acting like prison warders, defending the hostages against the most vicious of the inmates, guarding them as they take a walk of shame to a hideout, and chucking into solitary the most depraved of the prisoners. The prison break, when it finally comes, is exceptionally well done by director Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968) .
A small hole in the sun-parched earth becomes bigger until a furry head like a groundhog appears and the outside of the prison walls is viewed from the perspective of a potential escapee.
But, mostly, it’s a long haul of tension. Red holds the officials at bay with not just the hostages but a set of demands for better treatment, triggering a bout of negotiation and talking to the media. As in female-starved male-dominated pictures like The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and The Dirty Dozen (1967), women are shunted in by devious means, in the former via a mirage, in the latter through the sex workers smuggled in prior to the mission. Here, Cully dreams of landing by helicopter beside a pool of beautiful bikini-clad women who rush to worship him.
Although Cully and Red don’t exactly see eye-to-eye and for the picture to work of course must bury their differences and work together, the pair don’t rack up the confrontation required for this movie to zing. Cully is somewhat laid-back and Red uses his fingers rather than his fists or loud voice to make points. You kind of wished there was more sign of imminent explosion.
Sure, there are setbacks, and having to change plan and improvise on the spot. The stakes are only really raised when the vacationing prison governor returns and dumps the softly-softly approach of his stand-in, telling the prisoners in no uncertain terms that he will happily murder ten prisoners for each hostage killed, storm the wing and gas them all. The end shows exactly what level of brutality he is capable of.
But, meanwhile, we are left dancing around a bunch of fairly cliché characters, the prisoners in for short terms who don’t want to participate, the lifers wanting brief respite, the killers denied the opportunity to kill, the men who hide their sexual desires under the more acceptable cross-dressing.
Rioting is actually thin on the ground. In fact, Red has to do the opposite. Prevent everyone getting out of line because that will precipitate assault by the prison guards. Keeping everyone happily penned up for the time it takes to complete the tunnel is more Red’s plan than letting the prisoners loose to run riot.
That said, both Jim Brown (100 Rifles, 1969) and Gene Hackman (The Gypsy Moths. 1969) are impressive. Brown reins in the tough-guy act, holding sway in soft-spoken manner, while Hackman brings out more elements of the screen persona that would win him an Oscar a couple of years later for The French Connection. Naturally, Hackman, in retrospect, attracts the kudos but in reality I think this is a step-up for Brown and he is not acted off the screen. (The pair had appeared together in The Split, 1968).
One of the flaws, I would hazard, is that this kind of picture should have been the break-out vehicle for rising stars – as with The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and The Dirty Dozen – but in that department it’s sorely lacking and I think the picture overall suffers as a result.
Given he knows more than the audience where the story is headed Buzz Kulik (The Warning Shot, 1967) does well to concentrate on the friction between Brown and Hackman. James Poe (The Bedford Incident, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Frank Elli book.
Men under pressure are not under enough pressure to make it zing.