Starred Up is a prison movie which, at the start, feels almost like a reality documentary following the life of one troubled kid as he turns into a man. This is the point at which the film is at it's most brilliant, and this part I would give a good 9-10/10. Unfortunately, the film can't seem to stay with this realistic plotting and style and quickly begins to spiral into a cliched and unrealistic self-indulgent plot-line in which the criminals suddenly become blameless heroes and the prison system becomes monstrously evil to an extent that feels almost comical.
Eric Love (played excellently by Jack O'Connell) enters an adult prison for the first time after being incarcerated in juvenile detention (this is where the phrase "Starred Up" comes from).
Eric is a volatile, poorly educated, violent and disturbed individual who, at the same time, possesses hidden talents, charms and vulnerability. If you live in England and you were to be accosted by a mugger, Eric is basically that guy. He's uncouth, ruthless, cold and instinctively isolates himself from others. He's lived an incredibly tough life and it's implied he was put into the system because he maimed an adult who was sexually abusing him. The first thing we see Eric do, after being privy to a humiliating strip search and delivered to his cell, is fashion a lethal looking shank out of a toothbrush.
He then beats another cellmate who enters his room and attempts to make conversation, shortly afterwards starting a fight with the guards. The reason? Well, initially it seems he's just enjoying the violence and intimidating others. He's very unlikable. But a closer look as the film goes on reveals that it's because Eric is terrified and has no-one to reach out to. He is in an alien, hostile environment and lashing out violently is his main means of pre-emptive self defence. The violence is self-perpetuating.
Bad parenting also comes up as a topic; Eric's institutionalised father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) is also at the same prison and attempts, in the most toxic possible way, to show love and affection to his son. Instead he reinforces every bad lesson that helped make Eric what he is, much to Eric's disdain and frustration. Watching Eric trying to escape his father's poisonous influence while also dealing with very complicated feelings towards him is another high point of the fil.
This is all stuff I like - a subtle nuanced take on elements of criminality and what causes them, in a realistic context. Brilliant.
Next Eric attends anger management sessions with the prison therapist, Oliver Baumier (Rupert Friend). Baumier is a warm and intelligent character, perhaps the most likable character in the movie, and he does his best to understand Eric and help him to rehabilitate.
Unfortunately, this is where the film starts to really do itself an injustice with the portrayal of the prison Governor, Haynes (Sam Spruell). Spruell is a talented actor (he was a standout in the Hurt Locker as a British merc contractor, for example) but he is given the most one-dimensional character to work with here and it really sinks the film.
Warden Haynes is a simplistic sadistic and irredeemably evil character who seems to take an almost sexual pleasure in relentlessly sabotaging Eric's rehabilitation. It's like he's been transplanted in from a film lacking any subtlety or realism at all.
He lurks around smirking and oiling his way about the place in every scene he's in, as if Satan himself put on a suit and decided to run a prison. He smugly cancels Eric's therapy sessions even though he knows they're working, fires Baumier, encourages drug dealing in the cell blocks, bans every attempt to help Eric in any other way and then even attempts to *murder* him in cold blood at the end of the movie. Yes, you read that right; he personally enlists the help of several guards to string Eric up in his cell and attempts to frame his would-be murder as a suicide. While I like that Eric's father saves him, this is the only positive element of a completely dismal end to the movie - and the father-son bond could have been established in a far more believable way.
The "evil warden" cliche has been done since The Shawshank Redemption and while it worked because that movie was an entirely different type of story, in this film it just comes across as completely ludicrous and unrealistic. If the movie wanted to highlight the real problems of the prison system (as the revolving door metaphor at the end appears to suggest), it would have instead been better to show Warden Haynes as a good man on a limited budget who simply can't afford to run the therapy sessions, or who can't afford to police the blocks well enough to remove the drug dealing. Or perhaps as a man blocked from running the prison efficiently by his higher ups on the Council. At the end of the day, budget constraints are the true evil of the prison system. Not evil satanic wardens who just love making people suffer for a laugh.
Instead Haynes is a clumsy straw-man for Right wing political advocates for punishment in prisons, and the film demonises him as it clumsily attempts to push a more Left wing approach to rehabilitation in prisons. For the record I am a liberal and actually agree that rehab should be a big prison focus. But that doesn't mean I agree with the ridiculous portrayal of anyone who is remotely authoritarian as a murdering lunatic.
In the end I'm going to give the film 5/10, because half of it is fantastic and half of it is really disappointing. I still recommend a watch, but if you like realistic drama be prepared to find the last half really stretching your patience and/or suspension of disbelief.
Eric Love (played excellently by Jack O'Connell) enters an adult prison for the first time after being incarcerated in juvenile detention (this is where the phrase "Starred Up" comes from).
Eric is a volatile, poorly educated, violent and disturbed individual who, at the same time, possesses hidden talents, charms and vulnerability. If you live in England and you were to be accosted by a mugger, Eric is basically that guy. He's uncouth, ruthless, cold and instinctively isolates himself from others. He's lived an incredibly tough life and it's implied he was put into the system because he maimed an adult who was sexually abusing him. The first thing we see Eric do, after being privy to a humiliating strip search and delivered to his cell, is fashion a lethal looking shank out of a toothbrush.
He then beats another cellmate who enters his room and attempts to make conversation, shortly afterwards starting a fight with the guards. The reason? Well, initially it seems he's just enjoying the violence and intimidating others. He's very unlikable. But a closer look as the film goes on reveals that it's because Eric is terrified and has no-one to reach out to. He is in an alien, hostile environment and lashing out violently is his main means of pre-emptive self defence. The violence is self-perpetuating.
Bad parenting also comes up as a topic; Eric's institutionalised father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) is also at the same prison and attempts, in the most toxic possible way, to show love and affection to his son. Instead he reinforces every bad lesson that helped make Eric what he is, much to Eric's disdain and frustration. Watching Eric trying to escape his father's poisonous influence while also dealing with very complicated feelings towards him is another high point of the fil.
This is all stuff I like - a subtle nuanced take on elements of criminality and what causes them, in a realistic context. Brilliant.
Next Eric attends anger management sessions with the prison therapist, Oliver Baumier (Rupert Friend). Baumier is a warm and intelligent character, perhaps the most likable character in the movie, and he does his best to understand Eric and help him to rehabilitate.
Unfortunately, this is where the film starts to really do itself an injustice with the portrayal of the prison Governor, Haynes (Sam Spruell). Spruell is a talented actor (he was a standout in the Hurt Locker as a British merc contractor, for example) but he is given the most one-dimensional character to work with here and it really sinks the film.
Warden Haynes is a simplistic sadistic and irredeemably evil character who seems to take an almost sexual pleasure in relentlessly sabotaging Eric's rehabilitation. It's like he's been transplanted in from a film lacking any subtlety or realism at all.
He lurks around smirking and oiling his way about the place in every scene he's in, as if Satan himself put on a suit and decided to run a prison. He smugly cancels Eric's therapy sessions even though he knows they're working, fires Baumier, encourages drug dealing in the cell blocks, bans every attempt to help Eric in any other way and then even attempts to *murder* him in cold blood at the end of the movie. Yes, you read that right; he personally enlists the help of several guards to string Eric up in his cell and attempts to frame his would-be murder as a suicide. While I like that Eric's father saves him, this is the only positive element of a completely dismal end to the movie - and the father-son bond could have been established in a far more believable way.
The "evil warden" cliche has been done since The Shawshank Redemption and while it worked because that movie was an entirely different type of story, in this film it just comes across as completely ludicrous and unrealistic. If the movie wanted to highlight the real problems of the prison system (as the revolving door metaphor at the end appears to suggest), it would have instead been better to show Warden Haynes as a good man on a limited budget who simply can't afford to run the therapy sessions, or who can't afford to police the blocks well enough to remove the drug dealing. Or perhaps as a man blocked from running the prison efficiently by his higher ups on the Council. At the end of the day, budget constraints are the true evil of the prison system. Not evil satanic wardens who just love making people suffer for a laugh.
Instead Haynes is a clumsy straw-man for Right wing political advocates for punishment in prisons, and the film demonises him as it clumsily attempts to push a more Left wing approach to rehabilitation in prisons. For the record I am a liberal and actually agree that rehab should be a big prison focus. But that doesn't mean I agree with the ridiculous portrayal of anyone who is remotely authoritarian as a murdering lunatic.
In the end I'm going to give the film 5/10, because half of it is fantastic and half of it is really disappointing. I still recommend a watch, but if you like realistic drama be prepared to find the last half really stretching your patience and/or suspension of disbelief.