BEFORE: It's Labor Day, but I watched all of my big business films last year, except for "Wall Street 2", and I'm saving that for the Michael Douglas chain at the end of September. So instead I'll do a small chain of prison films (as in "hard labor"?). I did a prison-movie chain 2 years ago, which included "Papillon", "Brubaker", "The Hurricane", "Dead Man Walking", and "Escape From Alcatraz", so these films must have come into the collection after that. And Daniel Day-Lewis carries over from "Nine" as a bonus.
THE PLOT: Man's coerced confession to an IRA bombing he didn't do imprisons his father as well; a British lawyer helps fight for their freedom.
AFTER: Based on the true story of the Guilford Four, innocent people who were railroaded into prison after the British government was under pressure to convict someone for a 1974 pub bombing. The police coerced confessions from Gerry Conlon and his mates, and then went after Conlon's family as co-conspirators.
So we find Conlon's father, Giuseppe, sharing a cell with him, and the two men are forced to bond together in a way that perhaps they never did before. Prison gives them a chance to work out their personal issues with each other, and they watch out for each other while serving out their sentences.
A prison movie often seems like it's made with a higher degree of difficulty - it's probably hard to convey the monotony and despair of prison without the whole movie getting bogged down in monotony and despair. In this case, we the audience KNOW that the Conlons are innocent, so we're rooting for their survival and eventual release. And we know that forces on the outside are working to have their convictions overturned, so that gives us a sense of hope.
But they did a relatively good job here of keeping it interesting.
Also starring Pete Postelthwaite (last seen in "The Town"), Emma Thompson (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), John Lynch (last seen in "The Bridge of San Luis Rey") with a cameo from Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Michael Clayton").
RATING: 5 out of 10 powdered wigs
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