not bad
“Brubaker” is about as by the numbers as “one man challenges the system” movies get. You even get that scene in the end where all the people who the hero managed to help give him a unified clap of thanks and approval. But what keeps the film afloat is that it does have something pertinent to say about adhering to our values as human beings..that and a fantastic lead performance from Robert Redford in what is the closest he’d ever come to being “Cool Hand Luke”.
Stuart Rosenberg directed that one and he tries to bring the same kind of gritty realism to this movie where Redford plays Brubaker. He’s first seen on a prison bus headed to gloomy Wakefield. It’s a prison poorly run- including whippings, rape, food that’s past the point of edible, and a sleeping quarter which is basically one big room where all the men are clustered together in a dilapidated living space under a roof ready to cave in.
These opening moments are confusing but effective. Telling the guards from the prisoners can be challenging as there are no guards, just prisoners with the authorization to kill called trusties. We also don’t know who Brubaker is or why he’s here. This is what’s known as a farm prison and it seems like much of prison’s revenue stream also comes from lending prisoners out as slave labor.
We are essentially working this all out the same way Brubaker is, who, surprise, is actually undercover bossing this whole situation. About a half hour into the movie, he explains that he’s actually the new warden but came in as a prisoner to fully understand the corruption, abuse, and detestable conditions that are plaguing this place.
From there we see Redford take on many hats. He’s a reformer, a moral center, a savior, an idealist, and at times, even an action hero. Brubaker is there to lay down the law but also to remind people that they have a duty to it, and that even if these people are murderers, rapists, ect, that still doesn’t mean the state board of corrections has a right to ignore what few rights, under the law, that they are still entitled to.
It’s an episodic movie but not one starving for conflict. M. Emmett Walsh, so good at playing sleazy bastards, is memorable as a lumber businessman who’s been profiting off the prison the most. Murray Hamilton heads the prison board in contentious matches with the stubborn Brubaker, there’s a pretty stunning development concerning buried bodies, and Jane Alexander is good as an aide who agrees with Brubaker but encourages him he has to make concessions in order to get what he wants.
The whole thing does go through Brubaker, which is a shame sometimes as I would have liked to know more about some of the other people we meet in the prison. Yaphet Kotto does the best with an underwritten role as someone trying to figure Brubaker out but then there are villains, people playing both sides, or just contemporaries there to serve a purpose rather than be all that memorable.
Overall it doesn’t get the “Cool Hand Luke” or “Shawshank” treatment its opening makes you believe it might get, but it’s a very good role for Redford and a movie made with more well-meaning intent than insight. By the end it makes you feel pretty good, but you can’t help the feeling it could have made you feel great.