The Last Mile

In the death row block of a prison the tension rises as the hour of an execution comes closer. The prisoners, the guards and the man who is waiting are locked together in the same narrow corridor; nobody knows what to say and every sound grows. In the end the waiting becomes unbearable and what happens in the block goes out of control. The film does not present the execution itself as a scene; what it really tells is what the hours a man spends knowing he will die do to everyone around him. It was adapted from a work for the stage. The account does not argue about capital punishment; it stands inside the place that carries it out and keeps the viewer there too. Mickey Rooney plays the lead in Howard W. Koch’s eighty one minute American film, completed in 1959.