This film is hardly a "classic", nor is it a "social protest movie" that most of these misguided reviewers would have you believe. It falls into the realm of impressionable 'exploitation' films that attempted to substantiate struggling theaters with their wealthy competitors. Warner Bros. looked for "controversial" themes to release them from their box office slump and found it with topics like this, packaging emotional rubbish into the screens in the form of low budget B grade "content films". Anyone who thinks Warner Bros was a "redeeming and caring company interested in the plight of man" is deluded, they were merely out to make a profit, nothing more. Examine their union records, dictatorial management and abuse of rights at the time if you don't believe me. Surely, a film which pulls at your heart is only intended to pull at your wallet.<br /><br />The film itself has a weak script, stale acting (bordering on dull to over anxious), B grade direction, poor dialogue and is tedious. It meanders through one half hearted empty skit after another, dislodging us from any sincere interest at all. Muni is a boorish actor, neither disguising his brusque acting method nor elaborating on any convincing emotion. Standard film shots are scattered throughout, of locations and events in history, a parade from WW 1, a real street scene in Chicago, and this further aggravates the authenticity of the whole subject, making the film look "cut up" because most of it was filmed on cheap Warner Bros sets in Pasadena. The chain gang scenes are unrealistic, exaggerated, and only attempt to garner instant condemnation from the viewer. I don't need a mediocre film to instigate that "chain gangs are evil", I should know that from my own knowledge, and further more, this film contradicts itself because capitalism itself is slavery and there is so much insane dialog about the "virtues of work" in the beginning. I fail to believe that there is a difference between a worker at a factory occupied for 12 hours a day like a slave and a man stuck on a chain gang! An average film reduced by film historians and buffs to a "classic" merely because they can not understand why films had to make a profit for the capitalistic and authoritarian film companies which produced them. Do not tell me about "social awareness" when only profit to powerful monopolistic companies was involved!