Jack O’Connell
Ben Mendelsohn
Rupert Friend

Jonathan Asser

106 mins.
Drama
August 26, 2014

Not Rated

“Starred Up” is a British film about prison life. Its primary focus is on the relationship between a father and his son. At the beginning of the film, the 19-year-old son (played by Jack O’Connell) is transferred to adult prison. He’s been “starred up,” which means that he’s been sent to adult prison before the age of 21. His father (played by Ben Mendelsohn) is a well-established inmate at the prison who tries to keep his son on the straight and narrow. Of course, this doesn’t work out too well.

To complicate matters further, there’s a therapist (played by Rupert Friend) who volunteers his time to help rehabilitate a select group of inmates at the prison. The rest of the staff doesn’t take him seriously, and he’s haunted by his own demons. We don’t find out exactly what they are, but we know that he needs the prison as much as it needs him. In the end, the father becomes jealous of the therapist’s burgeoning relationship with his son and arranges for the group to be sabotaged. This leads to an ending sequence of brutality and twisted redemption.

This film won’t appeal to many.

First, much of the dialogue will be hard for Americans to understand. But this is a British film, and the dialogue is neither a major driver of the plot nor particularly necessary to understand the characters. I understood what was going on simply by paying attention to the carefully chosen shots and the attitudes of the expertly casted actors. I understood enough of the dialogue to piece it all together. This film shows you much more than it tells you. That’s its biggest strength.

Second, what happens may seem trivial or inconsequential to many. Some may think: Why is there so much fuss over so little? But that’s prison, isn’t it? In that microcosmic world, every action is a possible threat.

In “Starred Up,” the characters respond violently to the simplest of things. You may even miss the catalyst for their anger, at times. I could sense that a fight could break out at any moment. There’s a tension throughout this film that was produced with disarming simplicity. I couldn’t take may eyes off of it. This is lean and mean, but there’s something true about the emotions underneath the surface. The characters don’t come across as caricatures, which is something that could’ve happened easily.

More than once, director David Mackenzie allows his camera to linger on the revolutions of a turnstile. The takeaway is that, regardless of what goes on in prisons, there will be no change. Life, whether inside of or outside of prison, repeats itself and goes round and round and round.

Verdict: Good to Very Good

About: (Source: starredup)

Eric (Jack O’Connell) is a violent young offender prematurely thrown into the dark world of an adult prison. As he struggles to assert himself against the prison officers and the other inmates, he has to confront his own father, Nev (Ben Mendelsohn); a man who has spent most of his life in jail. As Eric forges allegiances with other prisoners, he learns that his rage can be overcome and discovers the new rules of survival. But there are forces at work which threaten to destroy him.