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.
They had a bit of fun with this campy melodrama, I reckon. One prison guard tells her reliever that she’s heading off “to catch the last show at the Bijou.” “That prison movie?” says the other, incredulously. “Yeah.” “They never get things right in prison pictures.” “I know. But I like to pick out the flaws.” Me, too. (more…)
Posted on February 21st, 2010 at 3:05 pm. Updated on March 14th, 2010 at 2:12 pm.
Take a new teacher with a past, a campaign against setting up a school in a prison, and an array of troublesome prisoner students. The temptation to bring everything to a happy conclusion (inspiring teacher redeemed, criminals reformed, star pupil singing ‘To Sir, With Love’… that sort of thing) must have been pretty strong. Fortunately, it’s resisted. (more…)
Posted on February 13th, 2010 at 11:04 pm. Updated on February 14th, 2010 at 7:32 pm.
This is a Women-in-Prison exploitation movie with a twist: the prison’s exploitation of the women is greater than the filmmakers’. That said, the filmmakers are not entirely innocent; they commit quite a few crimes of their own. (more…)
Posted on January 2nd, 2010 at 8:46 pm. Updated on January 10th, 2010 at 10:11 pm.
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.
This is a remake of The Criminal Code (1931) and Penitentiary (1938). Publicity at the time of its release proclaimed that it’s about ‘a convict’s love for a Warden’s daughter.’ It is that, but it’s much more about the criminal code and where a prisoner’s loyalties lie. And it does of pretty good job of it, too. (more…)
Posted on December 12th, 2009 at 7:46 pm. Updated on October 19th, 2013 at 6:06 pm.
Fascinating prison, this. There’s this solid, imposing wall surrounding a maximum-security prison, around which – if I’ve got this right – there are acres and acres of Toronto forest and a scalable, razor-ribbon-topped fence. It’s a prison where prisoners escape over the 7 metre wall with ease, only to routinely get run down by highly trained attack dogs in the foresty bit. No wonder people start asking questions. (more…)
Posted on November 16th, 2009 at 9:49 pm. Updated on December 28th, 2010 at 6:59 pm.
Paul Lamont (Giancarlo Esposito) is a bookish correctional officer working in the most bookish part of Brooklyn’s King’s County House of Detention – the law library. He’s a bit at odds with his fellow guards; he’s studying law at night school, he’s not yet so cynical that he regards every prisoner as scum, he has a middle-class schoolteacher wife, and he thinks a bit too deeply about the impact of what he does at work. He takes his work home with him. In every sense, it turns out. (more…)
Posted on November 3rd, 2009 at 9:17 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 1:14 pm.
This is a film that promises a great deal, and delivers much less. Worse still, it only takes just a few seconds of the opening scene’s awful acting and poor direction to dash any hopes you may have had for it. From time to time it begins to drag itself out of its meandering pointlessness, only to collapse again under the weight of cheap sets and a banal storyline, as if being about an Aboriginal couple in prison and a troubled Aboriginal man is enough. Not all movies need sheer triumph or tragedy to work, but it helps if you care what happens to the characters. (more…)
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 pm. Updated on March 5th, 2016 at 10:16 pm.