Prison stuff. In prison movies.
In a slight variation to the time-honoured story of the innocent man or woman in prison, this movie explores a parallel form of injustice - the sentencing of minor players in big drug busts to crushing terms of imprisonment under US federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. (more…)
Posted on July 24th, 2010 at 11:49 pm. Updated on July 25th, 2010 at 5:56 pm.
Why is it that when someone writes an autobiography we allow them to reflect glowingly on their contribution to the world, and yet when they write and produce a movie of that very same life it smacks of tacky self-indulgence and bald self-promotion? Harold Morris certainly doesn’t know the answer. (more…)
Posted on June 20th, 2010 at 2:48 pm. Updated on June 20th, 2010 at 2:48 pm.
I think it’s good to learn something new every day. I’ve just watched Death Warrant and I now know how to work as an undercover cop in a tough prison environment. First, use your own name. Fake names are apparently for wusses. Second, as soon as you’re inside, start asking lots of nosy questions; that won’t draw any attention to you, ever. Third, get your partner who is pretending to be your wife to do most of the background checking after you’re inside, so she can give you the low-down in the open, public visits area. Spontaneity is fun and so much more effective than preparation. Lastly, if it’s urgent, use your cell phone. Easy. (more…)
Posted on March 13th, 2010 at 4:38 pm. Updated on March 14th, 2010 at 8:45 pm.
This is supposed to be inspired by actual events, but it’s not clear which actual events provided that inspiration. Methinks there’s a liberal dose of artistic licence being splashed about. (more…)
Posted on February 28th, 2010 at 4:00 pm. Updated on February 28th, 2010 at 4:00 pm.
Carl Upchurch had it tough. Born in 1950 in South Philadelphia, his first memory was apparently of his grandmother killing his grandfather. He grew up in gangs and in and out of trouble, and spent 10 years in jail. Then he found ‘the light within’ and became a religious man, a voice against his fellow prisoners’ meek acceptance of the inevitability of their lives and their incarceration, and an activist for political and social reform. Conviction is his story. (more…)
Posted on January 11th, 2010 at 7:24 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2010 at 10:08 pm.
To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to this movie. At all. A young rapper from a drug-infested ghetto in Washington DC goes to jail. I’m not a fan of hip-hop, and I’m not a big fan of gangsta angst in prison movies. And then there’s the film’s tag: Slam - All in Line for a Slice of Devil Pie. What?! But it’s much better than all that. It’s a powerful story which refuses to accept that it should be the lot of so many young African Americans to finish up in jail, sending a message similar to the one American Me (1992) gave about gang life destroying the potential of young Hispanic kids in LA. (more…)
Posted on January 10th, 2010 at 10:02 pm. Updated on January 19th, 2010 at 7:46 pm.
Henry Fonda stars as Clarence Earl Gideon in this episode from the ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’ TV series. It’s not a prison movie, although it is as a prisoner that Gideon lodges a petition with the Supreme Court of America, asking that it rule the refusal of his trial judge to appoint a lawyer to defend him as unconstitutional. (more…)
Posted on January 9th, 2010 at 7:12 pm. Updated on January 10th, 2010 at 10:07 pm.
This has been referred to as India’s answer to The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and you can sort of see why. Both feature an innocent man in jail, denied justice, and both Andy Dufresne in Shawshank and Parag Dixit in this movie are detached outsiders in the prison environment. But that’s about where the similarity ends. While Andy calmly and patiently plays the game, Parag is intense, humourless, and in a perpetual seethe at the injustice of it all. (more…)
Posted on December 27th, 2009 at 8:03 pm. Updated on January 2nd, 2010 at 11:26 am.
Based on a true story, this follows Peter Madagin, an angry teenager who gets 5 years in an adult prison after a railway engineer dies in the train that he and his mates derail while mucking around, acting tough. It’s hard work empathising with him - so hard, in fact, that the film doesn’t work. Well, that’s just one of the reasons the film doesn’t work. (more…)
Posted on December 26th, 2009 at 9:46 pm. Updated on December 26th, 2009 at 9:46 pm.
The credits of this film thank the Grafton Correctional Institution and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. You wonder what they got out of being associated with this piece of tripe. Perhaps they weren’t warned about the storyline, because you’d think that they might have wanted to distance themselves from its themes of high level corruption and murder rings operating in Cleveland’s prisons. (more…)
Posted on December 6th, 2009 at 3:51 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2010 at 10:12 pm.