Kritiken

It’s difficult to find imagery of such comparably brutal, resonant, graphic power in other Hollywood films of this time—Howard Hawks’s Scarface might come closest—and the mixture of blunt savagery and symbolic suggestion retains a nightmarish pull.

Dassin later referred to the film as a "really dumb picture" and remembers saying, "but all these prisoners are such nice sweet guys--they're all so lovely--what are they doing in jail!" (Sarcasm aside, he has a point. This black-and-white, baddies-and-goodies approach somewhat undermines its convictions.) Still, the emotional depth eclipses both these amateurish failings and the noirish futility, and it certainly delivers a message, however unintentional it may be.

The violence is relentless... the photography outstanding... Brute Force was the first important assignment of leftwing director Jules Dassin: he and four of the film’s supporting actors were to be blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

one of Dassin's best films, [Brute Force] draws on WWII experience to draw a powerful analogy between the prison... and a fascist state... Brute Force was a notably violent film in its day.

Storm the tower, torch the cage: "Well, gentlemen, that's one way of getting sprung." War is the lynchpin of the furioso allegory, ingrown fascism suffuses the vertical structure of an uniformed sadist looking down on a captive lumpen-proletariat... Kubrick's gladiators and Peckinpah's desperados alike are anticipated in a riot culminating in an image from Overthrow of the Titans, though not even Molotov cocktails can crack the grid.

Assuming you have a fancy for violence and rough stuff on the screen, you will find a sufficiency of it in this deliberately brutal film... Jules Dassin's steel-springed direction keeps the whole thing appropriately taut. "Brute Force" is faithful to its title—even to taking law and order into its own hands.