moviereview - The Escapist

THE ESCAPIST

	When a lifer decides to break out of prison, he enlists the skills of a small group of desperate men.	score 3+	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Brian Cox, Joesph Fiennes, Damian Lewis, Steven Mackintosh, Dominic Cooper

Director
Rupert Wyatt

Screenwriter
Rupert Wyatt

Country
UK / Ireland

Rating / Running Time
MA / 101 minutes

Australian Release
June 2009

Official Site

Devotees of HBO’s Oz will be familiar with meaningful nods and grunts that pass for dialogue in contemporary prison drama. Similarly The Escapist keeps its focus on internal relationships that drive withdrawn men focussed on prevailing opportunity. What makes this different from other prison, and by extension, prison break films like The Great Escape or Escape from Alcatraz, is first time helmer Rupert Wyatt’s forceful choice to chop up timelines. In a chaotic opener, we start near the end with four meaty crims punching their way through a concrete floor.

As the story flashes back and forth, Frank (Brian Cox), a lifer who learns his junkie daughter needs help, decides to escape. He collects useful skills and connections from desperate men, hatches a plan and the breakout begins. One line of story fleshes out startling backgrounds and brutal alliances in the gothic arena of a British prison. The second charts a frantic escape through the claustrophobic sewers and grimy, disused tube stations of London’s Underground.

Wyatt’s film is nothing if not genre defying, despite tapping into the rich vein of prison stereotypes (chilling violence and homoerotica among them). What nudges this toward the top of its pack is a near perfect cast shaped by Cox’s sympathetic performance, Joe Walker’s pounding edit and Benjamin Wallfisch’s blistering score. It strives to be, and almost always is, beyond persuasive before being lobbed into goal with a lights-on reveal of an apparent semantic mix-up that rotates a story which spent most of its time on its ear, onto its head. The narrative possibly requires a second viewing to check validity or directorial trickiness, but such is the gruelling experience of The Escapist, we’re happy to take Wyatt at his word.

// COLIN FRASER