More Robert Redford; apparently he finished acting in this just before he directed Ordinary People (1980). Also for Yaphet Kotto who is fine but mostly just rolls his eyes at everything. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke (1967)) from material drawn from real-life events. In two sittings.
We're told Redford used to run a military prison (I think) and has been charged by Jane Alexander's intriguing but insufficiently drawn political animal to fix a prison farm somewhere in the South. This fixing involves the usual stuff and reducing the exploitation of the inmates by the trusties and local merchant class; the prisoners mostly just take it, as if they are nowhere near breaking point. Things fall apart over the last third or so. There are too many dangling loose ends pretty much all the way through. Some of it is funny but mostly it's just trying to make the obvious points about how corrupt the system is.
Apparently this was Morgan Freeman's first movie and he's very hard to miss. M. Emmet Walsh is unchallenged in Southern greaser mode as a lumber merchant. Everett McGill, inexpressive but perhaps that's what he was asked to do.
Roger Ebert: two-and-a-half stars. Grim and depressing. Needed more focus on the characters and less on the issues. Redford's performance is of "a frustratingly narrow range". Needed more action between Alexander and Redford (in what is otherwise a sausagefest). Vincent Canby. Both observe the characters just espouse points of view. I think they did not account for how these movies function as time capsules.
