Mansour Ziaee (Hosein Yari) comes from a little village in Iran’s north, where his family farm sheep. He convinces his parents and his newish wife to sell up and start a new life in Tehran, where they all squeeze into a tiny house. Mansour can work as a welder, but is told by his boss that there is no more work, and to stop ringing him. He’s called a villager, an idiot. His dreams are dashed; he feels betrayed. The next time he sees his boss, on a city street, his picks up a brick and smashes his head in. He is sentenced to death. (more…)
Posted on October 26th, 2009 at 8:31 pm. Updated on October 26th, 2009 at 9:34 pm.
Eduart (Eshref Durmishi) is a young Albanian who travels to Greece, hoping to become a rock star. He has the looks, but not the talent, it seems. To keep alive, he thieves. He also hustles. At a gay bar, he is picked up and taken home by a rich bloke who is not really his type. He is caught rifling through this bloke’s desk, but that seems to not to dampen the older man’s ardour once an initial attempt to get him to leave is out of the way. Eduart, more appalled than panicked, strangles him and flees. (more…)
Posted on October 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2010 at 10:39 pm.
Of all the film noir prison movies, few match this one in its compelling depiction of the gangster-in-prison still acting like a gangster. (more…)
Posted on October 17th, 2009 at 10:45 pm. Updated on October 18th, 2009 at 4:35 pm.
There’s a slight edginess to Stefania’s story which sets it apart, but not very far apart, from your traditional 1930s prison melodrama. (more…)
Posted on September 25th, 2009 at 10:29 pm. Updated on September 25th, 2009 at 10:44 pm.
Convicts 4 what, exactly? Better scripts, perhaps. (more…)
Posted on September 12th, 2009 at 1:06 am. Updated on September 12th, 2009 at 2:09 pm.
I wonder if audiences in 1938 felt at all cheated, expecting to see a dramatic prison break and getting nothing of the sort. Well, that’s not entirely true; we do see an attempted escape, which our hero thwarts, and we learn much later that there has been a successful break. But those incidents are far from the main game. Perhaps Break is used here in the sense of an ‘interruption’ to or a ‘brief rest’ from civilian life. (more…)
Posted on August 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2017 at 8:24 pm.
?ukasz is a young, out-of-work graduate when he is picked out of a Police lineup by a doddery old lady. He is duly charged with an assault and remanded into custody. He appears genuinely bewildered by the allegation and strongly protests his innocence, and in the absence of any other evidence linking him to the crime, we tend to believe him. He is temporarily placed in a cell with a swaggering old hand who tells him that he has to choose one of two streams – to be put in with staunch, hardened criminals, or be one of the ‘wankers’. An assessment officer suggests that he work in the kitchen, but as this would place him in the wanker category, he declines. It is at that point that we know that while he may have a major in geography and may be innocent of all criminal activity, at the very least he is a fool. (more…)
Posted on August 19th, 2009 at 7:02 pm. Updated on August 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm.
It’s a bit disturbing that a laconic Charles Bronson is the best thing about this action thriller which, it must be said, is rather devoid of thrills. It’s also a bit devoid of characterisation, which is pretty standard for this type of film, but at least Bronson gets the job done without being superhuman. That’s a plus.
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Posted on June 27th, 2009 at 11:50 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:34 pm.
I’m deeply, deeply suspicious of any film where the Director casts himself in the lead role and not only gives himself the best lines, but gets to bed the beautiful woman and be the hero all at the one time. Not even Woody Allen can always pull that off, and Rob Schneider certainly can’t in this limp, misconceived comedy. But it’s not just that. This is a one-joke movie, and when that one joke concerns homosexual rape, or any rape (even if it’s mostly about the avoidance of rape), it’s going to have trouble making me laugh.
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Posted on May 31st, 2009 at 6:15 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:42 pm.
There’s so much to like about this film – its authenticity, its subject matter, compelling performances, beautifully filmed… and yet, for some reason, it doesn’t hit you quite like it should. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:39 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 4:26 pm.