While Glenn Ford played the lead in this film, in so many ways this was co-star Broderick Crawford's film. Ford's character mostly reacted to events over which he had little control, while Crawford comes off as very thoughtful, tough and has some of the greatest one-liners I've heard in films. While not exactly a Film Noir movie, Crawford's lines are often pure Noir--especially during his first meeting with Ford after Ford's character accidentally killed a man. Crawford is the district attorney who must prosecute Ford and while Crawford is a decent guy and feels sorry for Ford, he must do his job and gets a conviction--even though Crawford tried his best to lose the case.
Later, after Ford is in prison, there's a new warden and oddly it's Crawford. This is the first of several very improbably occurrences during the film--the other being when Crawford first arrives at the prison. He is able to quiet a near-riot just by walking through the crowd of convicts in a maximum security prison--while in real life, he would have no doubt been torn apart by the thugs.
However, despite all this, the film has many great twists and turns, juicy performances (particularly by the guy playing the squealer, Ponti, who delivers a magnificent performance of a guy who knows he's about to die). This film is never dull nor is it terribly predictable--making it one of the better prison films I have seen. I heartily recommend it.
FYI--In a brief scene, you see that one of the inmates is none other than Jimmy Dodd--you know, the leader of the Mouseketeers on the original MICKEY MOUSE CLUB. In addition to this bit part, he also played a convict in the film BIG HOUSE, USA (though he oddly was not credited--maybe his role was too small to bother in this film). Considering Dodd's violent and checkered past, it's surprising they let this ex-con hand around Cubby, Annette and the other kids! ;-)
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