Poor Michael Beck. After landing a tailor-made role as Swan, the almost invincible gang leader in Walter Hill's "The Warriors," he made more mistakes in his career than a stuttering parrot.

This movie, in particular, was his crowning achievement. He attempts to play Clarence Carnes, a real life criminal who was one of the youngest man ever to reach Alcatraz. A few mildly interesting near escape scenes eventually land both him and the viewer in a four hour long life sentence.

We watch Michael as he tries to deal with all the hazards of prison life. The most noticeable one is boredom. We spend a lot of time with him in his cell, watching him do next to nothing. Fifteen minutes of this film are devoted to showing how he slowly puts a sandwich together, one piece at a time, as another inmate sends it to him, one piece at a time....

Suddenly, Telly Savales, who looks about as out of place here as Hulk Hogan did in "Mr. Nanny," shows up and tries to act mean. He and Beck plot to escape, but things go wrong, and they end up in a stand-off. Beck is sent to court and barely escapes the death penalty. Ughh, I thought at this point. They are going to drag this on even longer.

I hit the fast forward button during this movie far more times then I can remember. I admired Beck at one time, for being a tough guy, but this sleeper would have been better left behind bars.