Prison stuff. In prison movies.
The Executioner is one of those rare prison officer-centred films, as opposed to prisoner-centred. It traces the fledgling career of Oh Jae Gyeong (Yun Gye Sang), a raw, immature young officer whom we follow through trials both at his work and in his personal life. (more…)
Posted on December 22nd, 2012 at 7:29 pm. Updated on February 16th, 2013 at 7:56 pm.
Late in 1927 The Jazz Singer was released, becoming the first ‘talkie’ blockbuster – and condemning this silent epic to a much smaller audience than it perhaps deserved. It was a decidedly international co-production, with the director (Norman Dawn) and the principal actors all American, but the story a quintessentially Australian one. (more…)
Posted on November 1st, 2012 at 7:42 pm. Updated on November 1st, 2012 at 7:52 pm.
A remake of the 1926 silent film of the same name, Devil’s Island also shares a lot in common with The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Those High Grey Walls (1939) and the later Hellgate (1952); all have the chief protagonist providing medical assistance to a wounded reprobate and then being charged with being an accomplice. The hero in this one, however, seems less a victim of circumstance. (more…)
Posted on October 11th, 2012 at 7:53 pm. Updated on October 11th, 2012 at 8:00 pm.
I was hoping that the 20 minutes of action in this film that takes place in a prison – 20 minutes more, it must be said, than The Defiant Ones (1958), on which the story is loosely (and not very seriously) based – might have given this a prison movie feel. I was wrong. (more…)
Posted on October 3rd, 2012 at 9:34 pm. Updated on November 19th, 2012 at 8:33 pm.
I’m not keen on sci-fi prison movies, so it’s good that while this is set ‘sometime in the future’, it’s hardly futuristic, with very 1980s-90s cars and fashion and people speaking on pay phones. But like Fortress (1992), it provides a wonderful illustration of real prison innovation. (more…)
Posted on September 25th, 2012 at 10:16 pm. Updated on September 25th, 2012 at 10:20 pm.
You might start to suspect that something’s not quite right at the La Salle Detention Home for Girls even before you discover that it has its own morgue, replete with with a 5-drawer body refrigerator. That’s a lot of dead prisoners that they’re planning for… (more…)
Posted on July 14th, 2012 at 5:25 pm. Updated on July 15th, 2012 at 9:18 am.
This is, quite frankly, a pretty ordinary film. I have, however, given it an extra half-star for containing the only punishment I have seen, on film or elsewhere, involving a prisoner being forced to wear three large teapots. (more…)
Posted on June 30th, 2012 at 8:16 pm. Updated on June 30th, 2012 at 8:16 pm.
This is a cold, cold film. An escapee is returned to the prison, barefoot in the snow. Young men shiver in the forest, huddling together in the freezing rain, unable to find shelter. It is the unrelenting cold, as much as anything, that serves to remind us of how estranged these boys are from the warmth of people who care for them – and which constantly underscores the brutality of their existence. The cold… and the practice of referring to the boys only by their number, not their names.
Posted on June 4th, 2012 at 10:39 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:49 pm.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio achieved way too much notoriety by requiring his prisoners to wear pink underwear. Why, then, is the boss of this Thai jail, in which prisoners are all dressed in pink, not seen to out-tough America’s Toughest Sheriff? I suppose it could be just that one red sock got missed in the wash. (more…)
Posted on May 12th, 2012 at 9:27 pm. Updated on May 12th, 2012 at 9:27 pm.
As the opening credits of Con Games roll over, we see a prisoner being led into a cell (in order that he might be raped by a waiting prisoner, it turns out), and the cell door doesn’t have a locking mechanism. Maybe such details are unimportant. But it doesn’t augur well. (more…)
Posted on March 19th, 2012 at 10:29 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.