Stone (2010) directed by John Curran stars Robert De Niro as Jack Mabry, Edward Norton as Gerald ”Stone” Creeson, Milla Jovovich as Lucetta Creeson, Frances Conroy as Madylyn Maybry and Peter Lewis as the Warden.
“The performances are strong throughout. De Niro’s disillusioned cynic, Norton’s morally ambiguous Stone, Jovovich who is cat-like in her disdain and focused sexual enjoyment, Conroy’s frumpy alcoholic and the various supporting cast like the bland priest who offers the sentiment “God works in mysterious ways” as an actual response to a crisis of faith. And in the end we are neatly brought back to that bee buzzing in the beginning. More than anything this is a tale about exercising integrity in the moment of choice. Just because you’re not doing wrong doesn’t mean you’re doing right. It gets my hearty recommendation for that and for the thoroughly enjoyable intricacy of the collective acting.”
You’ll find the rest of my slightly cryptic rambling at my home away from home Cinema Sentries here: Stone
Felon (2008) – New Fish In The Shark Tank
April 16, 2011
Article first published as Movie Review: Felon (2008) – New Fish In The Shark Tank on Blogcritics.
In the opening sequence of Felon (2008) Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) lives a reasonably good life with his long time girlfriend Laura (Marisol Nichols) and son Michael (Vincent Miller). He has his own business, the couple are planning their wedding, he has just got a small business loan approved and they have a house of their own. One night an intruder slips in through Micheal’s window and Wade goes after him with a baseball bat to protect his family. The intruder has stolen his wallet and Wade scares him off. Instead of doing what he should have, calling the police and staying in the house, Wade chases the intruder out onto the lawn and when the guy turns fumbling for something in his pocket Wade takes a swing. He accidentally kills the intruder.
The basic premise for Felon is that a regular Joe makes one bad decision which winds up having more dire consequences than he could possibly have predicted. Wade gets sentenced to three years for involuntary manslaughter and gets sent to prison. Things start going awry almost immediately, as in on the bus transporting him and a bunch of career criminals to a high security facility.
There are certain harsh truths about prison that I don’t think would surprise anyone at this point, namely that incarceration does not bring out the best in people.
Wade gets caught up in prison politics immediately when the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood gives the murder weapon used on the bus to Snowman (Johnny Lewis) who passes it on to Wade. Because Wade will not tell the prison guards, lead by Lt. Jackson (Harold Perrineau) what he saw he gets sent to ”The Shoe” (SHU), which is Jackson’s domain.
This particular wing of the prison is completely under Lt. Jackson’s control and he seems to be of the opinion that the prisoners are little more than caged animals, which translates into their one hour of rec time in the claustrophobic prison yard being little more than a stage for cage fights that seems to be mostly about pent up aggression and racial hatred.
The guards watch all this from their bird’s nest, the observation tower where they sit in vigil with loaded weapons and wait to see who will come out on top. Mostly they let the fights go on just long enough that someone is bloodied and then they break them up buy firing rubber, real bullets or gas.
Wade is a ”new fish” in the shark tank and he has little or no idea how to navigate the waters. He defends himself when he has to at first and then fights when the brotherhood demands it of him.
The fights themselves are very visceral, a mixture of martial arts and street brawling. They are shot with a small hand-held unit that brings the viewer into the action in an almost disturbingly realistic way and that fits well with the overall feeling of claustrophobia and inevitability.
Apart from all this we also have the second level of the story, which mainly concerns itself with how the main characters actually have a life outside the walls. Wade’s wife struggles with trying to pay the bills and keep their house. Wade tries to keep it together for her and not tell her of the brutality of his prison life. The new guard, Officer Collins (Nate Porter), has just started a family and is trying to accept the extremely brutal attitude of the other guards and even Lt. Jackson has problems on the outside, when his wife divorces him and his son gets into a car accident.
Every character’s external life adds to the pressure that builds inside the walls and all that gets taken to the shark tank where it is played out like gladiatorial games.
There is, however, one truly fascinating character in the mix here, and that’s John Smith (Val Kilmer). He is a calm, unaffiliated, deeply connected and totally nihilistic lifer with a deep abiding love for family and an old biblical take on justice with a genius level IQ to back all that up. It’s a complex character played by an almost unrecognizable Val Kilmer. John Smith has an interesting relationship with a former guard of his, Gordon (Sam Shepherd), played with all the subtlety you can expect from two actors of that caliber. Stephen Dorff also gives a good performance of a man caught up in a veritable whirlwind of bad circumstance. He plays the edgy nervousness of someone literally fearing for his life in a situation he can’t get out of and there is enough character development that it pays to have someone who can find nuance in this otherwise bleak and grimly violent world enough that his actions become understandable.
The writer/director Ric Roman Waugh has done his homework well enough that you don’t find this over the top despite the level of violence. The thing I have some issues with is that the basic premise for this was that our every-man Wade is supposed to be a representation of a collective fear we all have of what could happen if we, due to unfortunate circumstance outside of our control, wind up in prison. And this is a little too heavy-handed for that. I understand the purpose behind the drama, the way the corruption amongst the guards is dealt with, but the heightened drama is not congruent with any kind of realism.
The moral core of any prison movie is always murky at best. This particular tale leaves no stone unturned, no bad deed unpunished and in the end Wade is redeemed and delivered back into the arms of his loving wife and that’s just a little too neat for me. Despite all the depth of character and the focus on interpersonal relationships there is still something a little hollow at the movies core, but luckily the actors’ performances are solid enough that it is still enjoyable to watch.
Felon (2008) directed by Ric Roman Waugh stars Stephen Dorff (Wade Porter), Marisol Nichols (Laura Porter), Vincent Miller (Michael Porter), Anne Archer (Maggie), Larnell Stovall (Viper), Val Kilmer (John Smith), Sam Sheperd (Gordon), Johnny Lewis (Snowman), Harold Perrineau (Lt. Jackson), Shawn Prince (Todd jackson), Chris Browning (Danny Samson), Nick Chinlund (Sgt Roberts), Greg Serano (Officer Diaz), Jake Walker (Warden Harris), Nate Parker (Officer Collins), Eric Gomez (Bodie), Mike Smith (Rooker) and Antonio Leyba (Gonzales).
A Prophet – Prison Like You’ve Never Seen It Before
January 17, 2011
Article first published as Movie Review A Prophet – Prison Like You’ve Never Seen It Before on Blogcritics.
The movie A Prophet starts when the nineteen year old Malik (Tahar Rahim) is sentenced to six years in prison. Almost immediately Malik, who is of French-Arabic decent, gets caught up in prison politics between the two major groups the Corsicans and the Arabs. Malik has no friends on the inside and no one on the outside to help him out and send him money and whatever else he might need. He is basically unprotected and even if you have just gleaned your understanding of how things work in prison through movies you know that can’t be a good thing. The Corsicans, lead by the white-haired patriarch César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) make a bid for Malik’s services to kill a witness transferred to the prison for a trial involving one of theirs.
The witness Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) has already offered Mailk weed in exchange for sexual favours and that is how Malik pings the Corsicans radar. Malik has no choice other than to comply or he will be killed himself. Luciani tells him that he will either murder Reyeb and wind up under Corsican protection or they will kill him. The murder itself is portrayed very differently from what we are used to in this genre. It is messy and complicated and very up-close and personal. Malik manages to do it, but the desperation and fear is so obvious that you, as a viewer, really feel it in the pit of your stomach. That’s where this story really takes off.
Malik has to walk a tightrope between the Arab clique in the prison and the Corsicans who have taken him under his wing. The hard-eyed and very palpably dangerous Luciani is, at the start of the movie, the main power in the part of the prison where Malik finds himself. He is surrounded by about twenty henchmen, fellow Corsicans, and he is completely in command. He is suitably paranoid and suspicious. He is also palpably dangerous, despite his age, and beats on Malik at more than one occasion. His hold over the prison stretches to the prison staff who he obviously has either bought or coerced. This character is is the archetypal “old king” of the realm and Malik starts as his dogsbody, cleaning his cell and making him coffee. Slowly Luciani’s power gets diminished, first by the fact that several of his lieutenants get released due to a political amnesty. It also becomes obvious that Luciani is never getting out, since he has committed what his lawyer calls “foolish acts” in prison.
Malik is on an opposite trajectory. He starts out as a nobody who has nothing, no money, no connections, no friends. He is a survivor and he adapts to his circumstance doing whatever is necessary. There is never any sense that he is a hardened criminal to begin with, but once he has killed a man, something changes for him. To me, the main point seems to be that he does not want to be powerless, like he is when he first enters the prison, and is forced into doing things against his will. Malik can neither read nor write but he gets the chance to learn in prison. He also picks up Corsican by hanging around the Luciani and his men. He is clearly intelligent and I get the sense that he uses his time to think about what to do next instead of just drifting along on the current of violence, drugs and drudgery.
Malik also gets into business for himself with one of his inmates “The Gypsy” (Reda Kateb) selling drugs to the other inmates. This in possible in part because of Luciani who uses his contacts to get a day-pass for Malik on the condition that Malik does some business for him on the outside. Malik takes care of Luciani’s errand, which involves one of his Corsican cronies and a gun pointed at Malik’s head.
The thing is that Malik is seen as an Arab by the Corsicans and a Corsican by the Arabs. He is in-between and trapped, but he continuously works on getting to a place where he has some kind of leverage and autonomy.
This is a low-voiced and understated tale that takes its time, spanning the six years Malik spends in prison. It has no voice-over, no exposition other than the bare-bones background given in dialogue. It never underestimates the viewer’s intelligence. You have to make up your own mind on what you are supposed to take from this. It is also cinematographically well done, portraying the claustrophobia of prison life through the mise-en-scène. The rare occasions when Mailk is let out for a day are in such stark contrast with the day-to-day in prison that you can sense the impact it must have on Malik, and the double-whallop of the violence he is forced to execute on Luciani’s behalf when he is nominally free is all the worse for it.
Malik rises to power through his dealing on the outside and his promotion to Luciani’s lieutenant on the inside. He knows that he could not have been where he is if not for the Corsican’s protection, but he never really stops chafing against the bonds and you get a very clear idea that he learns from his mentor, even if the relationship between them is volatile, to say the least.
There are subtle little details in this when it comes to the cinematography that really enhance and augment the narrative, like the shaky fade that happens a couple of times when Malik is badly stressed, or the fact that Reyeb stays with Malik, haunting him until they develop a strange kind of friendship. These things are never at the expense of the story being told and the story is rich and many-layered. There is the fall of the old king and the rise of the prince in the face of adversity, yes, but there is so much more going on that this story stays with you and the relatively realistic way in which it is told makes it all the more interesting. There are lots of prison-move stereotypes, but even when they are used they are used in new and inventive ways that makes it feel fresh. I particularly like that the fact that the tired cliché of the evil prison warden is completely absent here. The prison staff are just doing their job and they mostly do it politely.
I can’t recommend this movie strongly enough. It is so sharp, so intelligent and made with such care that is lingers well beyond the first watching. The actors give splendid performances, especially Tahar Rahim and Niels Aresturp and there is a lack of trite and tired genre-clichés that make it easy to stay on your toes as a viewer and that makes the story hit harder.
A Prophet (original title: Un Prophète) (2009) directed by Jacques Audiard stars Tahar Rahim (Malik El Djebena), Niels Arestrup (César Luciani), Adel Benecherif (Ryad), Hichem Yacoubi (Reyeb), Reda Kateb (Jordi), Jean-Phillippe Ricci (Vettori), Gilles Cohen (Prof), Antoine Basler (Pilicci), Pierre Leccia (Sampierro), Foued Nassah (Antaro), Jean-Emmanuel Pagni (Santi).
Mule at the Movies 