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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 02:33 |
Michael Pitt ("Last Days"), whose angelic good looks are well suited to his role as the young man who becomes catnip to his cellmate, plays Randy, who's been sentenced to 25 years for the minor crime of vandalism. He finds himself locked in with Jake (Stephen Adly Guirgis, better known as an acclaimed off-Broadway playwright), who casually informs him that he's in jail for slitting his wife's throat after she cheated on him.
It isn't long before Jake's initially friendly overtures take on a far more menacing edge, with the inevitable mind games and physical threats geared to making Randy his sexual slave.
Thanks to the innumerable similarly themed stage and film dramas that have preceded it, not to mention the multiple seasons of HBO's "Oz," there's little here that's unfamiliar, and writer-director Leonard is unable to provide any fresh variations. While the stars deliver highly committed performances, the static nature of the proceedings ultimately defeats them. The film is perhaps most effective as a cautionary tale regarding California's controversial "three strikes" law, but even on that front it seems heavy-handed.
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