“Government of Sweden,” the narrator intones, “you have the sole responsibility for our prisons. You say that the modern penal system strives to rehabilitate criminals. You’re lying! There is no rehabilitation in Sweden today. Only punishment.” But if that message is clear, the rest of the film does its best (unintentionally, one presumes) to shift the onus of rehabilitation squarely back on the prisoner. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on June 17th, 2012 at 6:33 pm. Updated on June 17th, 2012 at 6:33 pm.
Larry Winters was 34 when he died of a drug overdose in his Barlinnie Special Unit cell. He had been in jail for over 13 years. He was intelligent, damaged, talented and – even without the licit and illicit drugs he consumed in large quantities – most probably mentally ill. This film serves almost as a justification of his violent, troubled life, but also as an advertisement for the Barlinnie Special Unit, which took dangerous men and made them less so through its revolutionary approach of normalisation and prisoner empowerment. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on June 10th, 2012 at 10:24 pm. Updated on June 10th, 2012 at 10:24 pm.
This is a cold, cold film. An escapee is returned to the prison, barefoot in the snow. Young men shiver in the forest, huddling together in the freezing rain, unable to find shelter. It is the unrelenting cold, as much as anything, that serves to remind us of how estranged these boys are from the warmth of people who care for them – and which constantly underscores the brutality of their existence. The cold… and the practice of referring to the boys only by their number, not their names.
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Posted on June 4th, 2012 at 10:39 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:49 pm.
“I have one rule in my prison: There are no rules.” So says Warden Preston (Derek McGrath), but he’s not telling the truth; there are quite a few rules, including one which says that if you are in a fight-to-the-death you are not permitted to refuse to kill your opponent. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 27th, 2012 at 8:11 pm. Updated on May 27th, 2012 at 8:12 pm.
Prison is civil; life less so. That’s one message from this film which, based around the true story of one awful crime in August 1960, traces the journey of an itinerant alcoholic from his deprived, miserable childhood to his execution by firing squad. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 20th, 2012 at 7:48 pm. Updated on June 17th, 2020 at 4:04 pm.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio achieved way too much notoriety by requiring his prisoners to wear pink underwear. Why, then, is the boss of this Thai jail, in which prisoners are all dressed in pink, not seen to out-tough America’s Toughest Sheriff? I suppose it could be just that one red sock got missed in the wash. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 12th, 2012 at 9:27 pm. Updated on May 12th, 2012 at 9:27 pm.
There are a few other movies with exalted prison officials [Men of San Quentin (1942) is the first that springs to mind], but none that I can recall – other than this one – where a guard is given godly attributes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 6th, 2012 at 5:45 pm. Updated on May 6th, 2012 at 5:47 pm.
It is the absence of men that one first notices in the visitors’ queue. There are resigned wives, dutiful girlfriends, tired mothers, teary grandmothers. But no men. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 30th, 2012 at 9:30 pm. Updated on August 5th, 2012 at 5:24 pm.
One of the better things that can be said about this film, also known as ‘The Jailbreakers’ or, more properly, ‘Huo shao dao zhi heng hung Ba dao’, is that this time Chu Yen-Ping directs an original script, rather than stringing together scenes from his favourite prison movies as he did in Island of Fire (1990). Some things however remain very similar; same island, same prison, same format of four (or five) prisoners with interwoven stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 24th, 2012 at 11:20 pm. Updated on December 16th, 2016 at 8:20 pm.
1986, and two first-timers are received into a maximum-security prison. One, Yonatan (Idan Alterman), is placed in a big shared cell which includes an imposing drug boss (played by the film’s director, Arnon Zadok), who wastes no time in imposing himself sexually upon the young man. From his first day, he is enslaved. Clichéd, yes, but through Yonatan, everyone’s worst fears about prison are quickly realised. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 19th, 2012 at 10:56 pm. Updated on April 19th, 2012 at 10:56 pm.