We thought we would open up a discussion about inmates in movies, or the portrayal of inmates and prisons in movies, after reading today’s New York Times Critics’ Pick in the Movie Review section – “Starred Up,” a father-and-son prison drama about power relations and male behavior in confinement.
In “Starred Up” the main character, Eric, played by Jack O’Connell, is legally under age, but has been promoted to adult status in the British penal system. Brawny and athletic, he looks less like a child than like a young bull, and his capacity for violence unnerves even some of the hardened older criminals in whose midst he finds himself.
One of them is his father, Neville, played by Ben Mendelsohn, a powerful inmate with a network of prisoners and guards at his beck and call. Eric and Neville’s relationship, full of rage, suspicion, shaky loyalty and blocked tenderness, is the dramatic heart of the movie.
A movie about prison life in a UK prison
The movie is based partly on screenwriter Jonathan Asser’s experiences as a prison volunteer.
According to A.O. Scott of the New York Times the movie turns the complicated dynamic between a young prisoner and his problematic mentor into a ferocious psychodrama that locks you in and refuses to let you go.
Though it is, finally, an affecting story of two damaged men bound by blood and something like love (and also a thrillerish catalog of double crosses and shifting allegiances), it is, above all, a study in the patterns of chaos that govern penitentiary life.
You can watch a trailer for the movie here: http://nyti.ms/XRuc45
If you have a loved one in prison, do you watch any prison-related movies or shows?
