Ex-Marine Cross (Steven Seagal) and his buddy Manning (Steve Austin) are private security contractors brought in to decommission a ‘top secret military dark facility’, all of the military’s own dark facility decommissioners being otherwise engaged. Cross and Manning are old Black Ops mates, but that was a long time ago; Seagal is so bloated here he is more black pudding than Black Ops. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on September 2nd, 2013 at 10:45 pm. Updated on October 11th, 2013 at 9:21 pm.
Unchained is the story of one man’s struggle – with the unerringness of his belief that he’s always in the right, and against the temptation to escape. But it is (or was) also an opportunity for America’s first major minimum-security prison at Chino (the California Institute for Men) to showcase itself – and its first warden, Kenyon J Scudder, on whose book Prisoners are People the film is partly based. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 29th, 2013 at 10:45 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2013 at 10:55 pm.
“Molly, no girl goes on fighting the world just for the kicks she gets out of it. There’s always a reason. In your case, it could be something that happened in your early life,” proffers Superintendent Norma Calvert. “I never got over being born,” Molly says drily. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm. Updated on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm.
The Koreans seem to specialise in tear-jerking prison films featuring children and executions. Well, this one and Harmony (2010); it’s not a big field, admittedly. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 13th, 2013 at 10:47 pm. Updated on August 13th, 2013 at 10:47 pm.
When Deputy District Attorney Douglas Goodwin (Paul Kelly) smugly celebrates the success of his latest prosecution – another conviction and another death sentence – you immediately know that somehow the boot is going to be on the other foot. And it soon is. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 6th, 2013 at 10:29 pm. Updated on August 6th, 2013 at 10:31 pm.
If you were a reporter who had gone undercover to expose brutality on in a chain gang, do you think that you’d be at all keen for your editor to publish stories and photos – that can only have come from you – while you’re still working in the prison? Not hugely keen, one suspects. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 3rd, 2013 at 11:01 pm. Updated on August 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 pm.
Back in 2006 this was released as a movie on DVD. It had been Hugh Jackman’s first major screen role a decade or more earlier, and the marketers were no doubt looking to cash in on his X-Men fame. Yet it’s not a movie at all, but rather the unedited (and conveniently feature-length) first episode of the Correlli TV series, masquerading as something else. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 29th, 2013 at 11:03 pm. Updated on August 3rd, 2013 at 8:47 pm.
I know I’ve said that I’m not interested in sci-fi prison movies… yet here is another one. My excuse? I was on holidays and it came up on my TV. I didn’t seek it out; it came to me. And when it did, it came as a kind of updated remake of Escape from New York (1981), which I hadn’t been expecting. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 21st, 2013 at 10:48 pm. Updated on July 21st, 2013 at 10:52 pm.
Also known by the unfortunately dumbed-down title of ‘Concrete Hell‘, this is a nicely-crafted movie that traces the inexorable corruption of a newcomer to prison. It suggests that for her, and for others, there is no escaping being dragged into the brutality of prison life. And that to the uninitiated, prison is a vastly different world, operating under its own rules. At the film’s close, as the newcomer, Allison Campbell (Nicky Guadagni), finally elects to go into 23-hour lockdown in protective custody – the only way she can avoid either becoming inextricably entrenched in the queen bee’s criminal network, or being bashed or stabbed – she wryly reflects on the life ‘in a bubble’ that will be hers for the remainder of her sentence. “Listen, what are you complaining about?” a guard reproves. “It was your choice.” “Was it?” says Allison. And that’s clearly the question that we are ultimately asked to answer ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 16th, 2013 at 9:38 pm. Updated on July 16th, 2013 at 9:38 pm.
You could be forgiven for thinking that this is just another exploitative Women-in-Prison movie. And it probably is. But it duped me, somehow, into thinking it might be something more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 7th, 2013 at 8:18 pm. Updated on July 7th, 2013 at 8:18 pm.