I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

There's still incredible power to this real-life story of a decent man tricked into assisting a crime, sentenced to hard labor on a Southern chain gang, and betrayed into further misery after he escapes and rehabilitates himself. Paul Muni is superb as the tortured hero. [18 Feb 1994, p.14]

One of the best of the social-protest films--naive, heavy, artless, but a straightforward, unadorned story with moments that haunted a generation.

With masterly directing by Mervyn LeRoy of "Little Caesar" fame, the film sparked protests against prisoner abuse and actually led to changes in the penal code. [15 May 2005, p.E10]

I Am a Fugitive features one of the bleakest endings of its era, one that hasn’t lost its ominous power.

An uncompromising and frightening film that depicts the sadistic brutality and dehumanizing violence with which chain-gang inmates were treated in the South. [21 Nov 1993, p.59]

Only with a character as noble as Oliver Twist or David Copperfield are people able to endure such misery, and Paul Muni plays a character so single-minded in his pursuit of freedom, so damned anxious for even the smallest victory, that he makes Fugitive absolutely riveting.

Several sequences are worked out with genuine suspense, and, although one might be justified in presuming that some of the cruelty is exaggerated, the sight of scores of men working with shackled ankles is enough to make much of the narrative seem credible.