Brubaker

Brubaker (1980) is a drama directed by Stuart Rosenberg — watch it online on iFILM. Robert Redford plays Henry Brubaker, a new prison warden who arrives at a small Arkansas farm not in a suit but in handcuffs, posing as an inmate to see the place before he runs it.

What he finds goes well beyond mismanagement. Guards sell favors, prisoners work the fields under conditions closer to forced labor than corrections, and somewhere on the property — buried and unrecorded — are the bodies of men who died inside and were never officially accounted for. When Brubaker reveals himself and starts making changes, the resistance comes not just from guards but from politicians and officials who benefit from the existing arrangement. Yapheth Kotto plays Dickie Callen, one of the inmates who becomes an unlikely ally. Jane Alexander is the warden's lawyer and advocate. A young Morgan Freeman appears in an early screen role.

The script drew on a real Arkansas prison investigation from the late 1960s. The film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Stream Brubaker (1980) online on iFILM.