The grim business of melodrama behind prison walls, so often depicted in standard, banal fashion in films, is given both tension and dignity in Riot in Cell Block 11.
The Dissolve
April 21, 2014
[Director Don] Siegel later referred to Riot In Cell Block 11 as his breakthrough film, and it's easy to see why. Shooting fast and loose, he gives the film a documentary immediacy [...]
The film sketches in the set-up with a beautifully delineated terseness -- one-shot character introductions, a rookie guard cold-cocked, the prison corridor erupting as the cons pour out.
Siegel, with his innate sense of cinematic intensity and how to deploy violence with both visual and thematic heft, keeps the film's style relatively simple and straightforward, which allows the complexities of the situation at hand to take center-stage.
Don Siegel emerged as more than just a Hollywood journeyman director with this hard-hitting, realistic prison picture, which presents a credible account of both the riot and the conditions that caused it.
