Lock Up Reviews

This is quite a manly film. It has a huge characters that take up most of the screen, moments that only males can understand, and a quite-restrained bad-ass atmosphere to it. By the latter I mean to say it never really lets itself go wild, go mindless, like a dog with rabids. In fact, Lock-Up plays like an impressive police-dog with a mean temper... and a leash. I believe that may be the downfall of the film because as soon as you finish the film you realize just how nicey-nice it was, if compared to other brutal, violent films that have almost the same setting. It also has a happy ending: something I could see it coming from a mile away but never thought they would actually deliver.

The film starts off with Frank Leone having a saudade-of-sorts moment. The slow movement and the plethora of photos give us hints that if you want to sympathize with him, now's the time to do it. After when that's done, Frank and his girlfriend, Melissa, engage in a different kind of lock-up. After when that's done, a small series of unconvincing happy scenes follow which is supposed to be Frank's happy little life. But as a long time movie-goer, I patiently wait for this bubble of happiness to go bust. And the prick with the needle is Warden Drumgoole, who has a long-time vendetta and hatred against Frank, determined to make him suffer as much as possible. Now, Drumgoole had the potential of becoming one of the most intimidating and villainous wardens in movie history, but Donald Sutherland's pitiful, laughable acting makes Drumgoole as silly as his name. I mean, I thought he would bring some integrity to his role, some charisma, but failed in both accounts and then some. Anyway, we're quickly thrown into this rough, unpredictable, unstable life of prison and are introduced to the trademarks that are abundant in every prison movie ever made: sadistic guards, charismatic blacks, harsh life, corrupt "system", and enemies that seem to spring from the ground without warning. Even though the film heavily exercises all the above trademarks, it never does it in a full-fleshed fashion. Let's put it this way: It has the guts to call itself a tough prison film, but not the heart to speak openly.

Even though it was nominated for 3 Razzie awards, it wasn't really that bad a film. It's decent, it's quite well made, and has one pure emotional scene that females - or non-Mustang lovers - will not understand. Due to First Base's - an inmate - actions, the warden orders the inmates to annihilate a beautiful red Ford Mustang with baseball bats, while making Frank watch every second of it. Man, that's just cruel. That's like forcing a man to watch his own grave being dug. Or making him sit through a Milli Vanilli song for 5 hours straight. Being a Ford Mustang lover, that particular moment was extra difficult to watch.

Performance-wise, Sylvester Stallone as Frank Leone was just so-so. He never rises above the level and, due to several setbacks, doesn't fully flesh out his character. There are actors - ex: Daniel Day-Lewis -, there are entertainers - ex: not much of an actor, but a welcome screen presence, like Jackie Chan -, and then there's Stallone, who doesn't seem to fit in either category. I've seen most of his films and I've noticed he tries hard to connect himself to the character, but rarely achieves. The end result is either a flat-out caricature or just a flat character. In this case it's the latter. Donald Sutherland, having recently impressed me in The Hunger Games, made me change views on him once again by his terrible performance as the warden. What was he thinking with all that screaming? Hell, what were they - the crew behind the camera - thinking with all the screaming? Why didn't they yell cut? If those are his screams, then I would hate to see him electrocuted for real. The rest of the cast are OK, barely cutting the surface, but the one guy who can be called as the saving grace of the film has to be John Amos as the tough-as-nails Meissner, the captain. How in the hell did he manage to flare up his nostrils that way, I'll never know. Anyway, he introduces himself through these "poetic words":

"Two things:
One: I'm Meissner.
Two: Never fuck with Meissner."

In my opinion: awesome! This is not the first time a character has spoken like this, no. But this is undeniably one of the coolest. His line delivery was classic, his transition from first-person to third-person was awesome. In fact, everything about these two lines screams bad-ass, and I don't even know why.

In conclusion, Lock Up is not really a bad film, but it's not really a good one, either. Reserve it for long, gloomy days.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since I have watched most of the movies starring Sylvester Stallone, I thought I might as well check this one as well. Basically, it is one of those typical action flicks that Sylvester Stallone did in the 90's and 80’s and, at the end of the day, you either love them or you don’t. To be honest, I’m afraid I belong to the second group... I mean, sure, it sounded nice to have a semi-gritty prison flick (still, it was far from the realistic approach provided by ‘Un Prophète’) with Stallone but, in my opinion, the action scenes were rather average, Stallone displayed once again that acting is not really his strongest attribute and even Donald Sutherland couldn't save this from mediocrity. Indeed, I always had a weak spot for Donald Sutherland but, here, he provided one of his typical bad guy performances he gave during the 90’s and you can almost smell the paycheck from here. To conclude, I have seen worse, even with Sylvester Stallone (‘Over the top’ for example was much worse and pretty terrible) but I still believe that it is a very average flick and you should watch this only if you are a die hard fan of Sylvester Stallone.