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This is literally the worst film I have seen this year. Tim Robbins character is insufferably perfect, he wins over the entire prison cast, folksy salt of the earth characters every one of them (except those inhuman homosexual rapists!) in the first hour with his brilliant plans and audacity, he bears his unjust imprisonment with a martyr-like dignity and eventually outwits the guards and escapes prison with a plan straight out of MacGuyver. At no point does this man who has had his liberty taken from him unjustly, who is gang raped for two years, who witnesses his friends suicides and murders ever cry or show anger or frustration. Every time things are looking down he simply shows the audience how brilliant he is with another amazing plan or victory over the authorities, which made him utterly unlikable and completely unrelatable. Another issue is the unpleasant class and gender politics of the film. The prison clique Tim Robbins interacts with are all portrayed lovable working class rogues, apparantly serving decades in jail yet never showing personalities which would suggest their imprisonment in the first place. Futhermore, after an initial hazing they all come to look up Robbins Ubermensch as a hero and friend. Not once does anyone so much as breath an once of resentment at his fancy learnin' or smug superiority as an upper class superman. All of course except the homosexuals, an insular gang inside the prison who are described by the other prisoners as 'inhuman' and are indeed shown to be rapist monsters. As I understand it prison homosexuality is an understandable phenomena and yet the only prison sex shown in the film is commited by these dead eyed souless monsters. Towards the end of their story arc the auidence is even expected to cheer when the facist head prison guard horrifically beats and cripples the head of the gang. I could go on about the sarrachine nature of the plot, the shameless use of stock characters who telegraph their own fates as soon as they appear on camera, the excessive length of the film and King's complete inability to leave the viewer to work things out for themselves but I think I covered the main points that pissed me off. View this film with a critical eye and you'll see a blatent author Mary Sue curing the ills of the grateful working folk before abandoning them to live on a tropical island with his pet black man, all wrapped up inside a sugary and predictable yarn which cannot let a shred of ambiguity or doubt exist within it. 1/5
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Oct 30, 2010 11:40
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 02:25 |
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