It is not completely clear if Brett C. Leonard’s new play for film is a heart warming prison drama or “My Dinner With Andre” in a cell-bitch setting.
As co-lead Michael Pitt said, "All these directors who do different locations forget that one room can be shot from a million different angles and a million different ways. When I direct a movie, I'm going to use that."
As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait to direct a film like that because Leonard did it in this film.
As many different ways as one can film a standard issue small jail cell has been done in this film, same as “Dinner With Andre” and perhaps “Coffee and Cigarettes." Unfortunately, the screenplay of this film contains only a fraction of the penetrating thoughts of either of the former. The content is not there to offset the sparsity of setting.
Stephen Adly Guirgis (Palindromes (2004) and TV writer for “UC Undercover,” “NYPD Blue”) plays Jake, the current resident of a prison cell somewhere in the bowels of California’s correctional system. He is joined by new fish Randy, played by upwardly mobile Michael Pitt (“Rhinoceros Eyes” and “The Dreamers, (2003), “Murder by Numbers,” (2002) who is a very unlucky and very stupid 20 year old who has somehow managed to strike out under California governor Pete Wilson’s ill-founded three non-violent mistakes and you’re out law.
This type of mandatory sentencing that is supposed to streamline the system has been demonstrated as a big mistake and one of America’s crimes of the century. Turn up the lights on this one.
However valid the spotlight on society’s ills, this is the start of the problems with the screenplay.
As much as writer/director Leonard wants us to accept that anybody can be as stupid and unlucky as Randy, the audience is hard pressed. We are supposed to get the point that the legislation is bad but Randy is in the clink anyway for 25 years and away the story goes. But that premise is so unrealistic (although it certainly has happened, as have accidental deaths by falling out of planes) that something sticks in the craw from the very beginning.
Things get better when we are introduced to Guirgis playing Jake. He plays the professional jail bird and his tempo and phrasing echoes deep into the very stuff of prison life. He has all the time in the world and doesn’t have to think about a thing except why he is there. And it’s better if he doesn’t think too much.
His eventual victimization of his cell-mate is as much life-saving as it is violation. He does his duty to protect as much as he takes liberty. The fact is that in prison the two meld together. The only real liberty is the life two people share spending 22 hours a day within 6 feet of each other.
One has no right to privacy in any form. One has to share. Those are the rules.
The story proceeds with seemingly legitimate and entertaining self-study and mutual game playing. Like two men tied together in combat mano-a-mano, or perhaps two brothers joined at the hips, the cell-mates duke it out. But the screenplay is not there to support the run time of the film. It takes too long to get the point across and there is not enough entertainment to compensate for the same room shot two hundred times from different angles.
Good work by TV’s Laila Robins as Randy’s heartbroken mother whose few scenes say it all about the tragedy of the American judicial system. Also kudos to David Zayas, Former NYPD beat cop in Times Square, for his role as prison guard. Both add dimension to the film, but too little to make up for the sparse script and set.
Opens NY City August 4th. MPAA: Rated R for pervasive language including graphic sexual dialogue, and some violence.
Your Talkback on this Story