on the list: STARRED UP The list of great British prison films is not long. You might go back to Joseph Losey’s hard- hitting 1960 drama The Criminal, starring Stanley Baker, and from there, for a laugh, you might zoom forward to 1979’s big-screen sitcom adaptation Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker as the wily, Sgt. Bilko-like inmate Norman Stanley Fletcher. But you won’t get much better than that same year’s Scum, directed by legendary cult British director Alan Clarke. Commissioned by the BBC, banned by the BBC, and, as a direct result, completely remade from scratch to get a cinema release, Scum was untouchable, a shocking, brutal piece of cinema about the reality of prison life for young men. Released in UK cinemas shortly after Margaret Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister, Clarke’s film not only painted a brutal picture of the decaying borstal system for young criminals, it was also a none-too- thin allegory for the era’s wasted youth. For some 35 years, Scum remained a hard act to follow, and now here comes the first serious contender, the shock being not so much that it succeeds, but that the director responsible — the amiable David Mackenzie, whose most commercial film so far may be the offbeat coming-of-age story Hallam Foe — doesn’t have anything else remotely like it on his CV. A brutal, immersive prison survival story with a breakout performance by British actor Jack O’Connell.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 10:43:55 +0000
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