This is the true story of Jimmy Boyle, Glasgow standover merchant and hard man, as told by Jimmy Boyle. The first third of the film establishes his penchant for violence and thuggery as he fights off rivals as they encroach on his turf; the rest charts his time in prison after he was sent down for the 1967 murder of a gangland rival (a murder of which he claims he was innocent). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:54 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
It’s not often that one screenplay gets made into three films. The Mean Machine is the British version of The Longest Yard (1974 and 2005), with a soccer match replacing the gridiron contest between guards and cons. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:52 pm. Updated on June 2nd, 2018 at 11:08 pm.
You’ve got to wonder why someone would still feel the need to make a movie like this, as if “Let’s drop an ordinary decent guy and a sadistic guard into an episode of America’s Hardest Prisons” has never been done before. Or warrants a re-run. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:49 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
Feel-good comedy starring Burt Reynolds, filmed partly on location at Georgia State Prison, Reidsville. This is the original (and supposedly better) of the two Longest Yards, and apart from being a prison film is also considered by many as the best gridiron movie ever made. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pm. Updated on March 4th, 2010 at 9:38 pm.
In January 1939 Henri Young was one of four prisoners who took part in a failed attempt to escape from Alcatraz. This film purports to give a ‘fact-based’ account of his story. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:44 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
It’s hard to know what to make of a film which has the tagline “Liberty is not just a brand of yoghurt!” It’s a curious French-Canadian mix of titillation and pretension, of comedy and drama, and it winds up not working entirely on any level. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:41 pm. Updated on February 13th, 2010 at 11:11 pm.
It’s hard to know whether this fits into the prison movie genre or the slightly more esoteric university research movie genre. But I’ll pretend it’s the former, because it is all about imprisonment even if the people aren’t in prison. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
This is an old-fashioned tear-jerker, under the guise of a film with something important to say about prisoners’ capacity to change, amongst other things. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:34 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2020 at 5:42 pm.
There’s much to like in this horror film which dips its lid to the 1960 French prison classic Le Trou. Like Le Trou, almost all of the action takes place in a shared prison cell, and the strength of the film is in the characterisations, the complex relationships between the cell-mates, and its unhurried pace which matches the ordinariness of the prison routine. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:32 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
First written by Miguel Piñero as a play while he was a prisoner in Sing Sing, and then shot in ‘The Tombs’ – the Men’s House of Detention in Manhattan, it’s not surprising that this has an authentic feel to it. Piñero also played a minor character in the movie, but missed its premiere as he was back inside on an armed robbery charge. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:27 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.