Prison stuff. In prison movies.
This is quite a fascinating film, as much for the caution with which it treats (or rather side-steps) the churning political turmoil which serves as a constant backdrop to the action, as the main story of a prison escapee being pulled in several different directions. (more…)
Posted on May 1st, 2011 at 12:09 am. Updated on December 17th, 2013 at 9:41 pm.
Whoever decided to give this film the English-audience title of Chinese Midnight Express would seem not to have seen the original Midnight Express (1978). For starters, this flick features a Chinese national – bunged up not in some awful foreign jail, but in a Chinese prison. What’s more, he’s an innocent Chinese national in a Chinese prison, and an innocent Chinese national who doesn’t catch the Midnight Express (that is, escape). In fact, no-one escapes, or even tries. It’s a bit bewildering. (more…)
Posted on April 22nd, 2011 at 4:02 pm. Updated on April 22nd, 2011 at 4:18 pm.
This is a simple murder mystery based in a prison, suspended in dense allusions to the past and the future, and lapsing in and out of an avant garde stage play. ‘Homoerotic’ is the word most commonly used to describe it, and the Japanese title apparently translates literally into ‘4.6 Billion Years of Love’, creating anticipation of a monumental love story, or preparing one for a passion which is a mere speck in the universe. As it turns out, it is love which ends not with a Big Bang but a whimper. (more…)
Posted on April 5th, 2011 at 10:30 pm. Updated on April 9th, 2011 at 5:59 pm.
Burke Wyatt (Johnny Messner) used to be a cop before he got a little rough with a child abuser. Now driving trucks and no longer living with his wife, he is recruited by his ex-partner, now with the FBI, to go undercover at California’s Cainesville State Prison, where there have been a lot of unexplained deaths. In prison he is soon drafted into no-holds-barred fights (shown live on the internet) where the prisoners are sometimes so badly beaten they die. He gets badly hurt himself. That could explain the deaths, then. “Got some leads,” he says in a smuggled message back to the FBI. “Need more time.” No doubt he was a good cop, just not the sharpest. (more…)
Posted on March 28th, 2011 at 8:41 pm. Updated on March 28th, 2011 at 8:41 pm.
Three men walk into a bar – an Englishman, a Jew and an Irishman. No, sorry, wait… Eight men are held in a New York police cell for various infractions of the law – an Englishman and his recording industry colleague – an American of Asian heritage, an orthodox Jew, a heavily-tattooed Irish-American, an African American, his Hispanic mate and the Arab who refused to give them a ride in his taxi, and a minor Italian-American hoodlum. They join a ranting, smelly, soiled old man (John Ford Noonan) who claims to be God… and just might be. (more…)
Posted on March 22nd, 2011 at 9:56 pm. Updated on April 5th, 2011 at 8:30 pm.
It’s not easy to take this drama seriously, whether it’s watching hardened convicts bait a first-timer for being a ‘husband killer’ (parricide is apparently abhorred by the female prisoner population), or the warden allowing his inmates to press against the (cyclone wire) perimeter fence so that they can hear a press conference held in the prison car park and called to broadcast the shortcomings of his management to a national audience. (more…)
Posted on March 13th, 2011 at 9:41 pm. Updated on March 13th, 2011 at 9:41 pm.
If you can get past the notion that a prison guard can be stabbed to death and then, rather than have it investigated by the Police, the Warden is able to brutalise twelve prisoners for six months in the hope that one of them will falsely confess to the killing, you may well enjoy this film. (more…)
Posted on March 5th, 2011 at 10:23 pm. Updated on March 5th, 2011 at 10:23 pm.
Remember when ‘Made in Taiwan’ instantly suggested an inferior copy of the real thing? Perhaps you don’t, but Island of Fire evokes that era perfectly; it is a woeful agglomeration of martial arts action drama, crime thriller, and unashamed rip-offs of other films, notably Cool Hand Luke (1967). (more…)
Posted on February 27th, 2011 at 6:01 pm. Updated on February 27th, 2011 at 6:01 pm.
It can be difficult when the three main characters in a movie are all morally reprehensible, but here it’s part of the attraction. There are demons on both sides of the prison wall, parallels in the lack of willingness to wrestle with them, and plenty of moral ambiguity. (more…)
Posted on February 24th, 2011 at 10:14 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:48 pm.
This is a curious film. Curious because it implies that it is based on a true story and most probably isn’t, because it is one of the few westerns (replete with Cowboys and Indians) to cross over into the prison movie genre, and because it is a pretty blatant rip-off (sorry, re-telling) of The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). It also features arguably the best underground prison in movies before Fortress (1992). (more…)
Posted on February 15th, 2011 at 9:51 pm. Updated on February 15th, 2011 at 9:51 pm.