In this difficult and heart-wrenching story of justice perverted, Paul Muni, who was the Robert De Niro of the 1930s, plays James Allen, a World War I hero who ends up a fugitive after escaping from a brutal Georgia chain gang. The film is the story of how the ambitious young man ended up a prisoner and of his miraculous escapes, including his incredible rise in business in Chicago before being captured. The film is based on the real-life exploits of Robert Elliot Burns, who was still a fugitive from justice when it was released. The specific events of his life are significantly changed, but the basic fall and rise and fall are the same.

The film starts out with Allen, a decorated sergeant returning home from World War I, as he leaves the military behind. We see a capsule of the disillusionment that many returning soldiers felt upon their arrival in their home country: he has seen the world and wants to use his new skills as an engineer to go into business, but his family and friends think he should go back to the dreary factory job he had left behind. He chafes at being tied down, so he sets off for New England to work on a construction job. However, jobs were scarce for the returning soldiers, and he finds himself basically a hobo, drifting from town to town looking for enough work to pay for some food and a place to sleep. One poignant scene has him visiting a pawn shop to sell his prized medal; the proprietor points to a case full of them, driving home the point that the American public quickly forgets its heroes. He winds up accompanying another homeless man to a diner where he is unwillingly enlisted in a failed robbery; he is arrested and sentenced to ten years of hard labor on the chain gang.

Much of the first half of the film is a still-shocking expose of the brutal conditions of southern chain gangs (the film played a large part in their being outlawed across the south). Much attention is paid to the elaborate system of interlocking chains is used. We see whippings, random beatings of prisoners, and inedible food for the prisoners; this goes on for 16 hours a day. It also exposes the racism inherent in the system—this might be one of the first Hollywood films that didn't portray blacks as simple Sambos—when Allen learns that one particularly strong black man, Sam, will probably be kept on the gang for the rest of his life because he's a hard worker—but the film still didn't credit the actor.

Allen quickly realizes that the chain gang system will kill him before he can serve out his sentence for a crime he did not commit. He escapes, and the film's escape scene is one of the most tense and exciting prison break scenes in film history. There's even a suspenseful take on the technique of hiding underwater and breathing through a reed that, although it's a cliché by now, works really well. He eventually makes it to Chicago, where he works his way into being a successful contractor, but his past is never far behind. Through a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances, he ends up back on the chain gang, and escape is still his only option.

Paul Muni was one of the most respected actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, earning four Oscar nominations and one win before his career fizzled with the coming of World War II. From his star-making turn in 1932's Scarface, he went on to star in a string of biopics as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and as the Mexican hero Juarez (1939). His brand of acting is sometimes brilliant, but he too often turns to hysterics, since theatricality was valued more in the 1930s than it is now. He is stunning throughout most of this film; his expressive face, which resembled a young Ronald Reagan, added volumes to his few words. It is only late in the film that he has a couple of uncomfortable scenes where he overacts. However, his final scene, where he emerges from the darkness of a parking garage to talk to his one-time girlfriend, is the acting equivalent of a punch in the stomach. The unforgettable final line, after he disappears into the shadows, perhaps forever, will stick with you: when asked how he lives, he whispers, "I steal!"

Of course this is Hollywood, so the real story is probably even more sordid. Some major differences include these: Robert Elliot Burns returned from the war not a decorated hero but a shell-shocked and broke mess. Instead of being forced to rob the lunch counter, he was a willing participant in the robbery that netted $5.80. Instead of being an engineer who rose in the ranks through his hard work and continuing education, he was a real estate man who became an important publisher in the real estate trade press. Instead of the daring second escape involving a stolen dump truck and dynamite, he was a trustee who bribed a local farmer to hide him in his truck. These are minor issues, and they in no way detract from the power of the movie. Apparently, the true story was presented in a 1987 TV movie starring Val Kilmer called The Man Who Broke 1000 Chains.

In the too-weird-to-be-true category, Ellis Arnall, who became governor of Georgia in 1945, was inspired by the film to pardon Burns, who by this time was a free man everywhere in the country except Georgia. After being voted out of office in 1946, he became the president of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, where he acted to take down the studio system that made the movie that so inspired him.