When Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels was first released, the US Government’s Office of Censorship, not wishing to hand any propagandist advantage to its World War II enemies, declined to approve it for international release on the basis of its “long sequence showing life in a prison chain gang which is most objectionable because of the brutality and inhumanity with which the prisoners are treated.” That ‘long sequence’ runs to just 12 minutes, and in terms of depictions of chain gangs, is well down the brutality scale. What’s more, it’s quite possible that more damaging to the high moral ground occupied by the US was Sturges’ satirical treatment of the Hollywood culture. (more…)
Posted on October 13th, 2010 at 8:50 pm. Updated on October 13th, 2010 at 8:55 pm.
With much of Europe at war, what was clearly needed from Hollywood was an escapist prison drama; an attractive, wrongly accused heroine opposed by an even more beautiful top dog, and a reformist Superintendent with a strong belief in the inherent goodness of the women under her control. It’s a close cousin to 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932, and its variants), with the honor system coming through unscathed after a very big test. (more…)
Posted on October 3rd, 2010 at 7:28 pm. Updated on March 9th, 2016 at 7:37 pm.
An HIV-AIDS diagnosis. A prison sentence. These men are lumbered with both, held doubly captive. Doubly reviled. Life sentences, and not much of a life at that. (more…)
Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 10:52 pm. Updated on August 25th, 2010 at 6:43 am.
As the bound hero Ji Kang Hyuk (Lee Sung Jai) is dangled upside-down above a bucket of water and beaten, you could be forgiven for thinking that the title of this movie is an irony-laden reference to prison conditions in Korea. You don’t expect it to be the title of the Bee Gees’ song which he asks to play as he martyrs himself to the causes of equal justice for all and bringing about an end to harsh, unjust sentences. (more…)
Posted on July 31st, 2010 at 10:45 pm. Updated on August 1st, 2010 at 11:15 pm.
In a slight variation to the time-honoured story of the innocent man or woman in prison, this movie explores a parallel form of injustice – the sentencing of minor players in big drug busts to crushing terms of imprisonment under US federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. (more…)
Posted on July 24th, 2010 at 11:49 pm. Updated on August 2nd, 2010 at 9:28 pm.
Frank ‘Fast-Walking’ Miniver (James Woods) is a bent, dissolute, dope-smoking, work-avoiding guard who regards his job and his bosses with contempt. In his spare time he helps run a couple of whores out of his cousin’s general store, and just about everything he does is corrupt in one or more senses of the word. But in this grimy, dispiriting film, that doesn’t set him much apart from anyone else. (more…)
Posted on July 10th, 2010 at 11:30 pm. Updated on July 10th, 2010 at 11:34 pm.
It’s bit surprising that there aren’t more prison boot camp movies, given the potential (brutally exploited in movies like Full Metal Jacket) to show tough men being bullied, abused and humiliated. That potential really is within easy grasp of the prison movie genre. (more…)
Posted on July 4th, 2010 at 3:05 pm. Updated on December 2nd, 2011 at 8:29 pm.
Silviu Chiscan (George Pi?tereanu) is 18 and in the process of being reformed by the Romanian State. He has just 15 days of his sentence left to serve. Everything is good. He is then visited by his much younger brother, Marius, whom he had helped raise in the absence of their mother, who had seemingly found her children inconvenient whenever a new man came on the scene. That may have been quite often. Marius tells him that their mother has returned (after 8 years away) and wants to return to Italy in 7 days and take Marius with her. Silviu, up until then easy-going and likable, unravels. (more…)
Posted on July 3rd, 2010 at 3:27 pm. Updated on July 3rd, 2010 at 3:36 pm.
With all the fuss about 2009’s Un Prophète being a prison movie masterpiece – if not a masterpiece in any genre – this less celebrated Spanish prison film may have been overlooked. It might not be in the same class – it’s certainly no masterpiece – but there’s an awful lot to like. (more…)
Posted on June 27th, 2010 at 5:15 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:47 pm.
Why is it that when someone writes an autobiography we allow them to reflect glowingly on their contribution to the world, and yet when they write and produce a movie of that very same life it smacks of tacky self-indulgence and bald self-promotion? Harold Morris certainly doesn’t know the answer. (more…)
Posted on June 20th, 2010 at 2:48 pm. Updated on June 20th, 2010 at 2:48 pm.