Must See Movie...

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Canon City" (spelled c-a-n-o-n but pronounced as "canyon") is an example of a type of film prominent in the late 1940s: the docudrama. Usually these films had a noirish sensibility and were almost always about gritty subject matter. They were part documentary and part fiction -- filmed on location in actual locales with objective third-party narration, stripped-down production values and a journalistic focus on presenting events matter-of-factly and without superfluous emotion."Canon City" tells the story of a famous prison break from a Colorado penitentiary. The first part of the film gives us a tour of the prison and introduces us to men who were the actual inmates at the time the movie was filmed; the chief warden of the prison likewise plays the warden in the movie. After this extended prologue, actors take over to portray the actual escape and the subsequent manhunt that put families living nearby at risk as the escaped cons used their homes as hideouts.The film is very spare and terse, which is not a criticism from me. It's a refreshing break from the Hollywood melodrama that characterized glossier, studio-backed movies at the time. But the film is SO bare bones that it's difficult to feel strongly one way or the other about it. Its bargain-bin look is a nice compliment to the story it's telling, but one can't help but miss the style that artists who came with a higher price tag might have brought to the same material.Grade: B

This movie proudly bears the label of a semi-documentary and comes complete with the usual Foreword about all the incidents being portrayed exactly as they happened, and all photographed on their actual locations, using real warders, guards and convicts, etc.Personally, I doubt that the movie was shot in its entirety inside the actual prison — there's even a credit for 2nd unit direction and photography. But be this as it may, the studio material is certainly extremely well integrated with the location footage. Credit for this achievement is mostly due to John Alton, whose masterful photography makes Canon City must watching for connoisseurs. True, Alton's work here is less tantalizing than usual as he was required to match up his shots with Strenge's rather dull location work. Nonetheless, there are still more than a few indications (the profile silhouette on Brady's face) of genius behind the camera.Crane Wilbur's screenplay is less praiseworthy, but typical of that writer's detached, tabloid newspaper-style approach. He loves the sort of narrated rhetoric employed by contemporary newsreel commentators (Reed Hadley does a good job here with the actual narration), but fortunately his dialogue is less flowery and more realistic.Generally Wilbur's direction rates as rather dull, but here his handling is even occasionally inventive, although his experiments are not always successful (as for example in the oddly oblique use of the first-person camera right at the beginning, with the on-screen characters swapping words with the disembodied narrator).In all, however, the film emerges as a reasonably engrossing prison melodrama, convincingly acted (except oddly by the non-professionals), compellingly photographed, and tautly written. Despite its foregone conclusion, the storyline does build up a moderate amount of excitement and tension.

I've lived in Canon City, Colorado for the last five years or so, and the experience of watching the film is a unique, slightly surreal one for me. Not only does the film take place in my tiny little town in the middle of nowhere, it takes place in MY NEIGHBORHOOD! The prison is a mere two blocks from my house, the movie theater three blocks, the Elk's Club where the prison guards eat in the film is right next door to the restaurant where I work. Seeing these familiar landmarks (as well as the fantastic shot of Main Street, which has aged little) gives me a small rush, and makes me inclined to declare CANON CITY an under-appreciated cult classic. Without the haze of nostalgia, I realize that the film, while certainly competent, is one of a series of mostly-forgotten B-pictures, focused on mostly by film nerds like me. I was actually quite impressed with the cinematography and lighting, which was surprisingly sophisticated and compelling, and the film rarely drags, but it just feels kinda same-y. Still, how cool is it that I'm still seeing movies in that old theater that's showing Abbott and Costello in 1948?

Legendary noir cinematographer John Alton (Raw Deal, T-Men, The Big Combo and the still-in-print textbook "Painting with Light") shot this fairly routine semi-documentary prison-break film based on a real incident in Canon (pronounced "canyon") City, Colorado. We even get to meet the warden and some of the inmates (one of whom had been in stir since 1897!). Happily, actors arrive to recreate the break, which occurs similtaneously with a Rocky Mountain blizzard. Alton's snow is so Christmassy and photogenic it distances us from the grim business afoot, which has prisoners posing as guards who invade various local homesteads; they hadn't reckoned on one tough old hammer-wielding grandmaw. This is a minor but watchable period piece, once you get over the patriarchal voice-over, so full of moral certitude you could retch. But then that was SOP in midcentury.