prison
Adam Sweeting
On the face of it a murder mystery, The Night Of develops steadily into a panoramic survey of the American justice and prison system and attitudes to race and class. Produced by BBC Drama and HBO, it's based on the BBC's 2008 series Criminal Justice (which starred Ben Whishaw). The good news is you can watch all eight episodes right away on Now TV.The story so far is that Naz Khan (Riz Ahmed), a shy and unworldly Pakistani-American college student from Queens, New York, has been acccused of murdering 22-year-old Andrea Cornish after he unwisely borrowed his father's taxi for a night out in Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s much more to Brendan J Byrne’s engrossing, even-handed documentary Bobby Sands: 66 Days than its title might at first suggest. The timeline that led up to the death on 5 May 1981 of the IRA prisoner provides the immediate context – an increasingly dramatic one as the countdown of Sands’s hunger strike nears its inexorable conclusion. But the film’s interest is broader, not least in examining his role as a symbolic figure, both in the immediate context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and across a much wider historical perspective.The drama of Sands’ life and death has already Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
David Sington’s The Fear of 13 is many things – blisteringly immediate, compelling, emotionally devastating – but at times it may have you pondering whether it fits into any traditional “documentary” category.Over the hour-and-a-half of its run, it has us readjusting our perceptions on that score, as well as teasing us slowly towards understanding its subject. The mystery starts with the opening screen title that tells us that, after two decades on America’s Death Row, a convicted murderer has petitioned the court that his sentence be carried out – that he be executed. The monologue that Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The initial challenge – and there should be no underestimating the scale of it – of Nick Read’s documentary Russia's Toughest Prison - The Condemned must have been getting into a location which the great majority of its inmates will never leave. That was likely facilitated by the acquaintance between the film’s producer Mark Franchetti, the longterm Moscow correspondent of The Sunday Times, and Subkhan Dadashov, the laconic governor of Penal Colony 56: Franchetti had been the first foreigner to visit this remote prison in the Urals at the beginning of the last decade. Dadashov, who himself Read more ...
graham.rickson
Director David Mackenzie tells us in this disc’s extras that Starred Up is his first genre film, and Fox’s low-rent sleeve art suggests that this could be another dreary, thuggish Britflick. The prison drama clichés come thick and fast, from the hard-nosed governor to the attack in the shower block. There’s a well-meaning outsider helping prisoners deal with anger issues, copious, bloody violence and a sweaty gym scene.So it's good to report that Starred Up is a remarkable film, superbly acted and cannily scripted by Jonathan Asser, basing the screenplay on his own stint teaching prisoners. Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Director David MacKenzie has made a prison drama for those who don’t like the genre and an ace in the hole for those who do. Starred Up is an example of how quality filmmaking captures an audience no matter what the topic – and here, that quality includes skilful cinematography, a tight script and tremendous performances from both leading and supporting cast. The result is that we get to see how the horror of prison life reflects the violent pockets of society outside. This is a film that edifies and also gives hope – even if that glimmer is currently beyond the realms of reality.Like his Read more ...
Andy Plaice
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train Robbery in which crooks made off with £2.6million, Detective Chief Superintendent Butler had come to arrest Charlie Wilson and was knocking on his door."You look well, Charlie," said Butler. To which the fugitive replied: "And you, Guv. Cup of tea?" The detective was determined to find his man and, 50 years later, it’s a feeling shared by writer Chris Read more ...
kate.bassett
Forever breaking into song and dance, musicals are fun, fun, fun. They are primarily what folks go to for uplifting entertainment, are they not? Actually, many of the best aren't anything like that simplistic. Opening at the Young Vic last night, The Scottsboro Boys is no mere barrel of vacuous laughs, though it is comical and buoyant along the way.With its score and lyrics by America’s John Kander and Fred Ebb, and its book by David Thompson, this is a barbed biomusical about racism and miscarriages of justice. Set in the Deep South of the 1930s, it plays – sometimes very sharply – with the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Southwark Playhouse's new production of The Love Girl and the Innocent is London’s first in over 30 years, and there’s a reason Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s play rarely reaches the stage: it’s a lumpy mammoth of a script, demanding a cast upwards of 50, with stage directions that would be monumental if interpreted literally.Matthew Dunster does the only thing possible, paring it all down to the roughest edges, and does so brilliantly. Visually we've got exposed graffitied walls, wooden pallets and planks and a heap of tyres that define the prison parade ground and construction sites, where metal Read more ...
Heather Neill
There was a sense of nervous anticipation in the Maria, the Young Vic's studio space. Ninety minutes of torture was on the menu, and I'll admit to feeling some trepidation. But this show - and "show" is the right word - turns out to be a revelation. Writers Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada, co-founders of Belarus Free Theatre, have pulled off an astonishing coup: their feast for the senses, directed by Khalezin, tells horrific stories without melodrama, without overstatement or buckets of blood - and it is all the stronger for its brilliant mix of matter-of-factness and lyricism.Acclaimed Read more ...
Julian White
“The best times I've ever had were in prison,” says Crystal, aged 23, one of the three inmates being followed in The Prisoners (this was originally planned as episode one, but was bounced from the schedules by the death of Baroness Thatcher). On the brink of being released after serving a 12-week stint for drink-related crimes, she's waxing nostalgic, while her girlfriend Toni – also due out very soon – is in tears. “I'm dreadin' getting out,” she quavers.We also get to meet Jayde, 18, a prolific offender prone to self-harm, and Emma, 23, a well-spoken middle-class girl whose drug habit has Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
While it’s impossible to know the effect of Captured on the few who originally saw it, you can be damn sure it packed a punch. It still does. This unforgettable film was made in 1959 for the Army Kinema Corporation to train personnel in resisting interrogation. Classified as “restricted”, it was seen only by a relevant and limited forces audience. Instead of making a dry, instructional film, director John Krish fashioned a drama with clearly defined characters and a slow-burn intensity which climaxes disturbingly.Its first-time release on DVD comes in the wake of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Read more ...