Rough father-son bonding in an English prison: a breakthrough for director and star
“Starred up” denotes the British prison practice of introducing some particularly hard youthful cases into adult prison before they’re 21. Eric Love (Jack O’Connell) at 19 is an explosive, violent youth brought into jail after years of juvenile detention. David Mackenzie’s film is intense and realistic, its dialogue almost laughably hard to follow, even with subtitles. It’s laconic, fast, laced with prison slang and swear words, and drowned out by scuffles and the constant reverb of the prison. This is a sacrifice willingly made in this austere, tense, and violent feature to be true to a world that for most of us, despite all the prison movies, remains totally strange.
The screenplay is by Jonathan Asser, who worked as a volunteer counsellor in prison like Oliver Baumer (Rupert Friend) here. It’s about the taming of Eric under Baumer’s and his little group’s ministrations, and also about Eric’s epic struggle with the prison and, most of all, with his own father, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), who’s in the same jail and has been there for 14 years. Neville tries to take Eric in hand, mainly to please the prison boss Dennis Spencer (Peter Ferdinando), but proves wholly unsuited to the paternal role.
It’s mentioned in the film that those who’re “starred up” are “leaders.” In fact as played by O’Connell Eric Love is dangerous, but also impressive, strong, good looking, and evidently in peak condition (he constantly works out, in his cell, and a communal gym). But he is troubled and hostile. When Eric is first placed in that cell, he immediately uses a lighter and razor blade to turn a toothbrush into a shiv. Shortly he is seen knocking out one prisoner, garroting another, and stabbing a third. Somehow Baumer persuades the prison authorities to put Eric into his counselling group. It’s touch and go whether Eric will be reformed, killed, or put away for life. The explosive action keeps you guessing most of the way. The movie’s accomplishment is to keep you both confused and riveted.
Few actually saw Starred Up during its brief theatrical run. But it’s one of 2014’s must-sees, and the best yet by director David Mackenzie, whose work, despite eight features, has not been well-reviewed since his filming of Alexander Trocchi’s dark, sexy cult novel Young Adam a decade ago. It’s equally important as the go-for-broke major feature film breakthrough of the 25-year-old O’Connell. O’Connell dominates this film with his raw, literally naked physicality: he’s stripped down to frontal nudity more than once in the course of the action. O’Connell, “Jack the Lad,” as his tattoo shows in a Times photo by Bruce Weber, is no newcomer. He has been in television, notably a later iteration of BBC’s “Skins,” and at 17 played Pukey in Shane Meadows’ memorable skinhead memoir This Is England. But this year he has lead roles in three well-publicised features, the other two being Unbroken and ’71.
Eric Love (O’Connell), like Taher Rahim in Audiard’s 2009 A Prophet, is a nineteen-year-old inducted into a prison when the film begins. I thought of A Prophet when watching Starred Up, but this is smaller scaled and set over a much more limited period. One might also think of Alan Clarke’s borstal-juvenile delinquent films, Scum and Made in Britain. Tom Hardy in Bronson has also been mentioned. Not that there is much time to think of such comparisons while watching Starred Up. (When the smoke clears, Starred Up is an intense prison bath with fine acting by all, but A Prophet a richer, better film.)
As I said, 2014 was a big year for O’Connell. Unbroken, Angelina Jolie’s sophomore directing effort about American war hero Louis Zamperini’s survival through an ordeal at sea and several brutal years in Japanese prison camps, is a kind of blockbuster and an intense physical role for him, but it’s underwhelming as a movie. Much better is ‘71, where O’Connell plays a young English soldier caught in a very dangerous situation in Belfast during the Troubles. It’s a terrific thriller. He’s also in another 2014 release, playing Calisto in 300: Rise of an Empire. Of these ’71 is evidently the best film. But Starred Up is the new feature that best shows off O’Connell’s great gift for outrageous bad boy roles.
According to an admiring, well-informed online article about the film, it was shot (in chronological order, Mackenzie has explained) in real prisons in Northern Ireland, at the Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast and Maze Long Kesh in Lisburn. Some accusations of clichéd elements in the finale of Starred Up don’t detract from the compulsively watchable nature of the film and excellent performances of everybody, with O’Connell the standout.
Starred Up, 106 debuted at Telluride (and Toronto) in August-September 2013. Theatrical release 21 March 2014 in the UK, August in NYC and on the Internet. Early June release in France where it was very well received (AlloCiné press rating 3.8). Screened for this review on Google Play 4 January 2015.
DIRECTOR: DAVID MACKENZIE
WRITERS: JONATHAN ASSER
STARS: JACK O’CONNELL, BEN MENDELSOHN, RUPERT FRIEND
RUNTIME: 106 MINS
COUNTRY: UK
Film Rating: 
