Brubaker is a grim, often powerful prison movie based on the true story of convict torture and mass murder in a Southern penitentiary.

Brubaker is a dramatic movie with a social conscience and a welcome change from the primarily fluffy-headed film fare of the summer of 1980.

... a vivid, entertaining and shamelessly manipulative "crusading" melodrama about the impact of a reform warden on a barbarous penal institution.

The first half-hour is powerful stuff, but after Brubaker reveals his true identity, the movie begins to falter.