Remake of the 1933 prison drama with Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis, and I haven't seen that one in so long that I can't compare them. But on its own, this is a solid in-the-slammer melodrama, with John Garfield, always sympathetic no matter what he played, getting us to care about Tommy Gordan (the closing credits misspell it Gordon, but it's been Gordan in all the headline sequences), a ruthless crook with an inflated sense of self. When sent literally up the river, and the film gets the Sing Sing location right and has some helpful stock footage, he trusts his lawyer Jerome Cowan to get him out quickly, and he shouldn't. He has a faithful girlfriend in Ann Sheridan, who looks wonderful and was a heck of an actress as well, but here she mainly has to wrinkle her forehead and cry a lot. Gordan engineers a breakout with smart crook Burgess Meredith and stupid crook Guinn Williams, but thinks the better of it, and tough-but-fair warden Pat O'Brien begins to see him in a new light. Then some more plot complications and Tommy getting convicted of another crime he didn't commit, and a somber finale that isn't lightened up by the bombastic Warners music accompanying the fadeout. Nothing unfamiliar here, and a couple of plot points that are tough to buy, but it's mostly smacking good entertainment, and a reminder of what the screen lost when Garfield prematurely left us.
