The Escapist
Posted by Leo on April 17, 2008
The Escapist follows the story of Frank Perry (Brian Cox) as a lifer in prison that receives news that his daughter is dying and so he decides to escape to see her one last time. To achieve his goal Frank gathers a small team: Lenny Drake (Joseph Fiennes), a man of immense physical strength, capable of breaking through walls; Brodie (Liam Cunningham), Frank‘s friend that used to work in the sewers and therefore the ideal candidate to guide them through their escape route; and Viv Baptista (Seu Jorge), the prison’s dope cook.
What seems like an easy enough plan, becomes complicated with the arrival of James Lacey (Dominic Cooper), who comes to share a cell with Frank. Lacey gets the attention of Tony (Steven Macintosh), a drug addicted, sadistic who fancies him, and brother of the prison’s ‘king’ – Rizza (Damien Lewis).
The cast performances are overall brilliant when they’re given the chance of talking at all. But despite Joseph Fiennes muscled body, it is at some points difficult not to think of the rough Lenny as someone who had a bit of a posh education going on. And it’s a real disappointment to have this as the first British movie in which a Brazilian artist performs. Especially Seu Jorge who is such an iconic politically outspoken Brazilian music figure and starred in Wes Anderson’s excellent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
It’s an overall outstanding cast for such a bad… average… too, too average movie. Director Rupert Wyatt wrote an over tried and tested plot: man wants to escape prison, man gathers team to help him escape, man gets caught/escapes. And did nothing new or interesting with it.
What he did was play about with time and space in the film in order to try and salvage such a repetitive and boring picture. Did it work? Well if despite what I’m writing here you still go and see it, you are bound to leave not sure of what really happened thanks to the little twist at the end (the only bit of the film worthwhile). But will you care enough to even talk about it after the movie – I know I didn’t. But hey, not all is grey. With such a poorly developed plot, credit must given to the editing team who managed to fill in the gaps, the lack of dialogue and action with realistic sketches of the escape route. That is unless you count the one where they thought they were being clever by showing an air vent with the lights on. Yes, you are right, air vents have no lights! But again I repeat – the acting performances are overall truly brilliant.
out in cinemas across the UK June 20th.
