VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Lidia Draper 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.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

mark.waltz A cast of familiar character actors make up prison staff, inmates, reporters and government flunkies. Brutal living conditions get the inmates in an uproar and without unnecessary plot in the way, the riot erupts immediately. This is how to tell stories like this with minimal female intrusion, and just men needing to do what they need to do to fix a horrible situation with brutal conditions. There is also the human angle with prison employees having to open their eyes to see what has lead to this day. Certainly there had been prison movies before but they softened the conditions and minimized the brutality.Among the cast in the huge ensemble are Neville Brand, William Schallert and Dabbs Greer who later played a retired prison guard looking back on his life in "The Green Mile". A brilliant script is aided with Don Siegel's fantastic direction, greatly influenced by what producer Walter Wanger had seen when he was in prison. Sltrady tense to begin with, this gets even more so as the film goes on. The film industry would greatly be influenced by these styles of filmmaking, a much needed transition as permissiveness opened up the story telling field to serious subjects like this.

classicsoncall Without resorting to the type of melodrama that some of the Warner Brothers pictures of the same era tended to do, "Riot in Cell Block 11" is a fairly gritty piece of work that surprises with characters on both sides of the jail cell expressing similar views. The film attempts to influence the viewer toward a need to improve prison conditions in general, and in that regard, the warden in charge (Emile Meyer) agrees with the prisoners that something needs to be done to improve physical conditions, train them for a trade once they're released and keep the mentally challenged separate from the population at large.That mentally challenged part gets a workout in the story from inmate Crazy Mike Carnie, realistically portrayed by veteran character actor Leo Gordon. Until researching this picture I had no idea he was once incarcerated himself for armed robbery, and I never noticed his formidable physical appearance before in a handful of Western movies and TV series appearances. Suffice it to say he could have handled himself credibly in any situation he might have encountered.The choice of leader for the prison uprising featured here was also a casting coup; Neville Brand had the perfect face and demeanor for a convict ready to explode. His no nonsense approach demanded the killing of a guard for every prisoner who died when the authorities attempted to regain control. Interestingly, things didn't go that far even when one of the inmates died following the state police advance on the prisoners during the siege.Though the newspaper headlines proclaimed 'Rioters Win' once the state governor signed off on the prisoner list of demands, the victory for the inmates was a short lived one. One almost feels sorry for convict leader Dunn (Brand) when he learns he'll face charges and a potential thirty year prison term for leading the riot, offset by the warden's partial victory in getting needed repairs for the prison and having the mental defectives like Carnie segregated from the main population. That was a perfect moment for Dunn to go ballistic on the warden but the picture didn't go in that direction.For a more recent picture, 1980's "Brubaker" does a commendable job of exposing corruption in the prison system, with an emphasis on the attitude of politicians who would rather look the other way when it comes to prison reform. In that one, Robert Redford portrays a newly assigned prison warden who integrates his way into the prison population to take on corruption from the inside.

Wizard-8 I hadn't even heard of this movie before until I stumbled upon the DVD of it at my neighborhood video store, and I decided to take a risk and rent it. After watching it, I'm glad I took a chance. Though the movie does seem a little tame when compared to modern day prison movies, it still packs a decent sized punch. It does bring up some of the brutal things prisoners have to go through, as well as the sometimes brutal behavior of prisoners themselves. And the way things are wrapped up at the end does come across as believable. The authentic feel of the movie is greatly assisted by shooting in a real prison with real inmates and guards.If I have a complaint about the movie, it would be that none of the characters are really examined deeply. I would have liked to have learned more about some of the ringleaders of the riot, as well as some of the guards. Though such deeper examinations might have made the movie much longer than the lean yet efficient eighty minute running time, and the movie might have dragged. But that's a minor problem; the movie as a whole works very well.

bmacv Riot in Cell Block 11 comes as a bit of a shock, but not because of its brutality (it's a cuddly little puppy compared to Jules Dassin's Brute Force). The shock is that Don Siegel, later to become inextricably associated with such violent and/or reactionary movies as his remake of The Killers, Madigan and Dirty Harry, turned out a temperate, balanced and humane look at prison conditions; another shock is that the movie emerged in the middle of a complacent decade not remembered for its sympathy to marginalized groups in American society.The droning voice-over that opens the movie doesn't bode well: It warns of a wave of riots throughout penitentiaries across the country and even takes us to a criminal-justice convention in Toronto where the topic is aired. But soon we're inside Cell Block 11, part of a run-down, overcrowded institution whose warden (Emile Meyer) has been campaigning for reforms, to no avail. (Standing up for convicted criminals, then and now, is political suicide.) When opportunity knocks, the inmates take over the asylum. What they want is press coverage of their quite moderate demands: More elbow room, separate facilities for the mentally ill among them, job training. But they've taken guards as hostages, and threaten to execute them if their demands aren't met.Leader of the rebels is Neville Brand, who tries to negotiate in good faith, but Meyer has one hand tied behind his back – by Frank Faylen, a hard-line state bureaucrat. Brand, too, has trouble keeping the prisoners in line, particularly those who see the riot less as a cause than as a chance for some cheap thrills. Siegel manages to keep the story taut within the claustrophobic confines of the prison and without too much in the way of splashy incident, until he brings it to a surprisingly rueful end. Somehow, he has managed to make an issues movie told almost solely through action.Siegel's career proved that he had more sides to him than he's generally known for. He started out cutting montages in other directors' movies (Blues in the Night and The Hard Way among them); when he moved into directing, his early work showed range in style and tone: The period thriller The Verdict, the light-hearted noir The Big Steal, the eschatological drama Night Unto Night. Too bad we can't remember him by saying that he just got better and better, because, unfortunately, it just isn't so.