Very well executed

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Moderately decent B drama about a hard working fisherman wrongly accused of murder who ends up in prison, gets a parole, which means jack squat when he tries to find a job. Barton MacLane isn't traditional leading man material, but kept getting leads in B's throughout the late 1930's into the mid 1940's. Sort of a second choice to roles that didn't go to Charles Bickford, he's a dependable character actor who rose above supporting roles. He's supported by Glenda Farrell, aka Torchy Blane, playing his devoted fiancé who stands by him even though her abusive father and brute brother vow to keep them apart. It's fast moving and truthful, but just one of many on the same subject. Good waterfront scenery and a believable prison break are the highlights. When MacLane tries to take a job out of the country and is reminded by his parole officer that he's not allowed to leave the state, all I could say is duh, wondering why the writers thought that it would be believable for him to even try. Minor complaint, but it was just too obvious to overlook.

As a pair of detectives, Barton Maclane and Ward Bond set up Humphrey Bogart for some of his best one-liners ever in 1941's "The Maltese Falcon". In this one, the pair find themselves on the outs for most of the picture in a prison story that's actually pretty good for a B flick, even if Universal Pictures is the company of record. The idea that MacLane's character is named Joaquin Shannon managed to keep me off balance for most of the story; an Irish-Portuguese fisherman is one combination I just couldn't wrap my head around.This is the kind of movie that was right up Warner Brothers' alley during this era. They had their own fair share of prison movies that dealt with victims caught up in unfortunate circumstances, films like "San Quentin", "Invisible Stripes", and "Crime School". MacLane portrays a tough prison guard who endures a demotion for his rough tactics in the first one mentioned, and to his credit was capable of portraying characters on both sides of the law quite effectively.The story presented here is somewhat improbable when you begin to analyze it, but I don't think that's what movie goers were doing back in the Thirties. What you have here is a fairly gritty prison drama in which MacLane's character simply wants to serve his time, but keeps getting sidetracked by career criminal Big Red Kincaid (Bond) who was inadvertently responsible for Shannon's conviction and sentence in the first place. It takes the entire picture to come full circle for Shannon to figure that out, and elsewhere might have made for a dramatic showdown. Here it was just a bit too anti-climactic to justify everything that went before, but at least the good bad guy came out on top.

This surprisingly powerful and compelling film starts weakly with a hackneyed tale of a curmudgeonly father opposing his daughter's choice of a mate.Glenda Farrell's Jean sees the hero behind the burly fisherman with a fascinating face, Barton MacLane, and waits for him through a maddeningly unfair series of arrests and punishments in prison. Shannon is the archetypal Everyman with integrity who just can't catch a break -- until the romantic final scene, when the good guy triumphs and finally gets the girl. The perfect ending is a bit anticlimactic but once in a while a happy conclusion manages to satisfy. A bravura production that I'll not soon forget.

Prison Break finds the two leads of Warner Brothers Torchy Blane series, Barton MacLane and Glenda Farrell, in a serious sociological drama about the dilemma of an ex-convict trying to go straight. Both in and outside of prison MacLane has it really stacked against him.This film was done for Universal Pictures and MacLane plays a captain of tuna fishing boat who's in love with Glenda Farrell. She's a widow with a small son, but for reasons not quite explained her father Victor Kilian has a vicious hatred for MacLane. MacLane also has a sister played by Constance Moore who is in love with Edmund MacDonald who works on MacLane's boat.On his bachelor party night, MacDonald gets good and drunk and later wakes up next to the unconscious body of Edward Pawley who is brother to Farrell and son of Kilian. MacLane says he clocked, but the next day Pawley dies and MacLane is in a jackpot for manslaughter.In prison MacLane's nemesis is Ward Bond who is one vicious thug, usually the kind of part MacLane plays in films. Which is also coincidental because if you recall both MacLane and Bond played partner cops in The Maltese Falcon and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.In the end it all resolves itself a little too neatly. In fact when Bond kills a prison guard during an escape attempt that should have brought the death penalty for him. I'm surprised that Universal Pictures neglected that little fact.Still MacLane gives a really good and sincere performance as a man trapped by circumstances only partly of his own making. He should never have taken the rap, even though he thought it was only for assault. A bit melodramatic and neat still Prison Break is a well made B film from Universal and it was nice to see Barton MacLane as a good guy and hero in this film.