What I’d read about Harmony suggested that it was an uplifting movie about a choir in a women’s prison. Is it uplifting? I guess so… for a moment or two. But it is also just about the saddest prison movie that you will see, full of pain and loss and suffering. It could be three films: one about the choir, another about the harsh separation of a mother from her young child, and yet another about the senseless execution of a kindly, elderly woman. Very uplifting. (more…)
Posted on February 16th, 2013 at 7:46 pm. Updated on February 16th, 2013 at 8:04 pm.
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.
Let’s make it clear from the outset: this is not a campy remake of Girls in Prison (1956). I wish it were. (more…)
Posted on January 27th, 2013 at 9:17 pm. Updated on January 27th, 2013 at 9:17 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.
Internet synopses aren’t exactly at their most reliable on this one. “A tough street kid takes the rap for a burglary committed by the son of his foster family and is sent to a boys’ reformatory, where the inmates are under the thumb of corrupt guards and a brutal prison doctor,” they say. Well, firstly, the kid talks tough but he’s not a street kid. And the guards aren’t corrupt, the inmates aren’t under the thumb and the doctor is far, far from brutal. Otherwise, it’s spot on. (more…)
Posted on December 30th, 2012 at 8:55 pm. Updated on December 30th, 2012 at 8:58 pm.
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.
Who would have thought? You go into this movie expecting a good old-fashioned piece of racial hurly burly, with the bigot realising the error of his ways in the end – a sort of Unshackled (2000), played for laughs. That’s how it’s promoted. Instead, it turns out to be a romantic comedy, of all things. Mind you, it’s not so radical that the romance is between the two cellmates. And of course it still ends with the bigot realising the error of his ways.
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Posted on December 10th, 2012 at 8:59 pm. Updated on December 10th, 2012 at 8:59 pm.
This is one of those stories that would quickly be dismissed as ridiculous… were it not based on a true story. (more…)
Posted on December 9th, 2012 at 5:51 pm. Updated on December 9th, 2012 at 5:51 pm.
Made by some of the same people who brought you Police Academy I and II. That’s as much as you need to know, really. Or if it’s not, the fact that it has yet to make its way to a DVD release probably tells you much the same thing. (more…)
Posted on December 2nd, 2012 at 7:08 pm. Updated on December 19th, 2013 at 7:57 pm.
In some ways this is the antithesis of an action movie; an accidental political prisoner becomes a celebrated revolutionary leader, also by accident, after he invents a board game in prison. If there is such a thing, it is quite possibly an inaction movie, and all the better for it. (more…)
Posted on November 2nd, 2012 at 9:20 pm. Updated on January 1st, 2017 at 9:04 am.