Independent Film Festival Boston 2009

Actor Brian Cox in attendance.

Prison lifer Frank Perry (Brian Cox) has written letters to his wife for 14 years, but hasn’t received a single response until now. Upon learning that his daughter is a junkie, he’s determined to break out—and he thinks he’s found an ingenuous way to do so, via the prison laundry room. His motley assortment of accomplices includes fellow lifer Brodie (Liam Cunningham), hardnosed boxer Lenny Drake (Joseph Fiennes), prison librarian/drug manufacturer Viv Batista (Seu Jorge) and Frank’s newbie cellmate James Lacey (Dominic Cooper), who faces the wrath of the ward’s head con and drug kingpin Rizza (Damian Lewis) and his dangerous, drug-addled brother Tony (Steven Mackintosh).

Although it flaunts all the elements of a typically stylish prison break flick, THE ESCAPIST eschews convention in its thrilling, innovative structure: from the first scene on, it punctures the events leading up to the break with flash forwards of the break itself. Vacillating between them with sudden jump cuts, the film simultaneously tracks two developing narratives—the first immersed in the hellish, meticulous rituals of prison life, the second charging through a surreal netherworld of claustrophobic air vents and tube tunnels. The two strands duly unite at the end, but with an astonishing twist that significantly alters the meaning of the film’s title—and it works, thanks to Cox’s solid, multifaceted, career-defining performance.

- Chris Kriofske

Screening supported by The Boston Irish Film Festival