The Escapist – Movie Review

The Escapist is a 2008 British prison break film starring the-one-and-only Brian Cox. It flew under the radar, being an independent release from a fledgling writer/director Rupert Wyatt. Joseph Fiennes, Liam Cunningham, Dominic Cooper, Seu Jorge, Steven Mackintosh and Damian Lewis co-star in the film. The movie premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews, although like I said it managed to escape me until now. This review is spoiler free!

Let’s get right to the point. I gave this movie 4 out 5 stars. There are endless ways to approach a movie review, but I’ll go for the simplest. Since I gave it 4/5 stars, I’ll write about 4 things from the movie that I liked, and the one thing that I didn’t.

1. This movie is smart and subtle. It doesn’t explain everything that is going on, and the viewer must piece things together bit by bit. In addition, there are essentially two stories going on at the same time; one focusing on the build-up to the escape and the other on the break itself. There is also a great deal of attention paid to the caged feeling one must sense when being incarcerated, so much so that you start to feel incarcerated yourself. Adding to this stir-crazy feeling is the fact that the viewer never even finds out why the main character is in prison, let alone why he’s serving a life sentence.

Brian Cox as Frank Perry in The Escapist

2. The entire cast, in particular Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, and Damian Lewis, put on a wonderful show. In fact, Joseph Fiennes is so good in this that he is hardly recognizable and almost redeems himself from his current butchering on the ABC series Flash Forward. Damian Lewis plays a super creepy and intimidating prison kingpin with an effeminate flare. According to IMDB, Lewis apparently wore women’s underwear throughout the movie’s filming. You could almost see a thong riding up.

3. The tension is unbearable. These inmates are at each others throats, yet despite that, they each have a peace of the puzzle that may help them escape. Meanwhile the imposing rule of the prison leader puts severe strains on the plans to escape, as well as what little friendships do exist. The music and sound in this movie is both masterfully simplistic and perfect, which is something I don’t normally recognize, and served the tension and build-up nicely without being at all overdone.

4. The actual escape from prison is clever and sophisticated, yet all the gritty and grimy things one supposedly must do to break out are there. The other great aspect of the break is that it basically takes place through-out the entire movie, interspersed with the build-up and planning. Often the best part of a prison break movie is the break itself, so making this extend for an hour and a half was sheer brilliance.

… And The 1 Thing I Didn’t Like About Movie

1. The ending. It’s good… it’s just not great. In fact, despite the unexpectedness of it, I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out. I still like the movie and recommend it, but a 5 star movie wouldn’t have left me with that same sort of feeling. I’ll just leave it by saying that the ending doesn’t mesh well with what the rest of the movie is presenting, regardless of how shocking and surprising it is.

I rated this movie 4/5 stars on Netflix. I would say that around the last 10 minutes was when it jumped from a 5 to a 4. If you’re into clever dramas, prison breaks, and/or Brian Cox, this movie will not disappoint you. Here are your obligatory Official ‘The Escapist’ Movie, Netflix (must be logged in), Wikipedia, and IMDB links. (Who can possible write about a movie on the web these days without links to those four sites?)

Other Prison Break Movies

The Shawshank Redemption will probably forever by the reigning king of prison break movies, although that’s a pretty niche genre to be categorizing. The Great Escape, Papillon (massively under appreciated and much more of a cinematic masterpiece), and O Brother Where Art Thou come to mind as other great escape flicks.  No, I have not seen Midnight Express… yet.