There have been prisoners in unwelcoming foreign jails before – in Russia (In Hell, 2003), Thailand (Brokedown Palace, 1999), Mexico (Get the Gringo, 2012), Morocco (Hell in Tangier, 2006), and of course Turkey (Midnight Express, 1978), amongst others. And now we have a well-to-do young American battling a corrupt justice system while languishing in the El Sexto Prison in Lima, Peru – the site of several real-life riots in the early ’80s (including one in 1981 in which 27 prisoners died in a gang-related fight, and one in 1984 in which 24 prisoners died) before it was closed in 1986. It’s based on the true story of Monty Fisher, who wrote the script. (more…)
Posted on June 9th, 2013 at 9:48 pm. Updated on June 16th, 2013 at 2:39 pm.
K-11 sounded to me like a submarine, or a lubricant. I hadn’t realised that it is a real segregated housing option for gay and transsexual men at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, around which this drama is based. Loosely based, and with extra salaciousness, one hopes.
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Posted on May 20th, 2013 at 10:46 pm. Updated on May 20th, 2013 at 10:47 pm.
Not to be confused with So Evil, So Young (1961) or The Weak and the Wicked (1954). But it does share something with both of those British movies – the young women in this reform school are not particularly bad, or wicked, or evil. Some, surprisingly, are even youngish. (more…)
Posted on March 26th, 2013 at 9:42 pm. Updated on March 26th, 2013 at 9:42 pm.
Ji?í Kajínek is the most famous prisoner in the Czech Republic. Some people think he’s innocent of the crimes for which he is serving a life sentence – the murders of a crime boss and his bodyguard, and the attempted murder of a third man. He is the only man to have escaped from the Mírov Prison, in 2000, which would seem to have led to legend status being bestowed upon him. Kajínek is loosely based around his case. It’s hard to categorise; it’s not a prison film, sadly, and more biographical murder mystery. It has some elements of a classic thriller, but one of which all Czechs, presumably, already know the outcome: Kajínek has not been exonerated and remains very much in jail.
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Posted on March 10th, 2013 at 4:30 pm. Updated on March 10th, 2013 at 10:14 pm.
This invites comparisons with Scum (1979), updated and set in the context of the London riots of 2011. But it owes more to Doing Hard Time (2004), a less auspicious film which features another hurt, angry and apparently law-abiding man intent on avenging a terrible crime… and who is similarly prepared to surrender some high moral ground by senselessly attacking police – simply to get into jail and to get access to those who have wronged him. (more…)
Posted on March 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 am. Updated on March 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 am.
I’d ignored this for years, believing it to be a prisoner-of war movie (a genre I am – for no discernible reason – at great pains to avoid), until it was very sensibly pointed out that despite it being set in a prison which holds only soldiers, it is “not POW, but actually a detention centre for English soldiers who (have behaved) badly. Ergo, prison!” It’s true; in my ignorance I had neglected a truly magnificent prison flick. (more…)
Posted on February 13th, 2013 at 8:59 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:41 pm.
By the time The Hurricane was made, American moviegoers were already well used to the brutality of the French penal colonies from films such as Condemned! (1927) and Escape from Devil’s Island (1935). This provides another opportunity to take a swipe at the French for their administration of justice (and management of their overseas territories), this time in French Polynesia. (more…)
Posted on January 20th, 2013 at 6:59 pm. Updated on January 20th, 2013 at 6:59 pm.
Some movies just make you feel old. I hadn’t seen any of the previous 7,069 Naruto manga or anime (or any of the previous seven films) which might have helped, but I still had this unsettling sense, as I struggled to keep up with the plot, of 7-year-old Japanese kids (any 7-year-old kids, really) taking it all in with ease. (more…)
Posted on January 16th, 2013 at 9:01 pm. Updated on January 16th, 2013 at 9:01 pm.
I think I breathed a sigh of relief on coming to the end of H3: “Thankfully, that might be the last of these that I have to watch.” Which is a bit bewildering, because I’ve found other films dealing with the dirty protests and hunger strikes by republican prisoners in Northern Ireland in the early 80s [such as Silent Grace (2001) and Hunger (2008)] very watchable. It wasn’t any aspect of the conflict that troubled me, and it certainly wasn’t the repetition in the storyline; I can’t recall having a similar reaction after seeing my 67th escape movie or innocent-man-in-prison movie. (more…)
Posted on January 11th, 2013 at 9:37 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2013 at 9:37 pm.
I don’t know what possessed me to watch this movie. Made in 2008, it is set years into the future (2012), at a time when the US economy has collapsed, all prisons are run for profit and cage fights in prison have become so passé that they are no longer guaranteed to make money. With just a handful of days to go in 2012, I may well have been curious to see just what advances in correctional management I had missed. (more…)
Posted on December 24th, 2012 at 4:17 pm. Updated on December 24th, 2012 at 4:18 pm.