When it comes to an intensely raw portrayal of prison life, it would seem hard for any film to top Steven McQueen’s Hunger (2008). Startlingly, Starred Up submerges itself into even deeper territory. Weaving a father/son (they’re new prison mates) plot with starkly observed, uncanny realism, David Mackenzie’s film also includes three of the year’s best performances. Jack O’Donnell, soon to make his presence felt in the film adaptation of Unbroken, absolutely stuns with his gritty yet nuanced portrait of Eric, a take-no-shit new inmate deemed dangerous enough upon admittance that he’s placed in an individual cell. A transfer from a juvenile jail, he fends off what seems like an insurmountable response from prison guards after he accidentally injures a prison mate. A calm yet intense psychotherapist, Oliver (Rupert Friend), saves him from more severe payback from the wardens and introduces him to a possible way out of further turmoil via group therapy sessions.
Eric is recalcitrant on all fronts. His explosive fury often comes as such a shock that its accompanying violence elicits a laugh as often as a shudder. O’Donnell, often nonverbally, allows us to feel his anguish and his defenses. His rejection of both Oliver and his dad, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) seem natural given who we know him to be. Reforming him will be one rough road for either of these guys, even though they’re polar opposites in temperament. Oliver zones in to the feelings of his subjects like a samurai, immune to even the most violent of exchanges among the group. Oliver’s empathy is all-encompassing, while Neville feels the best he can give his son is to impart the hardness necessary to survive prison life. He often implores Oliver to “teach him a lesson” in behavior. When Neville attempts to enter Oliver’s group as a participant, we’re suspicious of his having undergone an emotional change; rather, he seems to be utilizing a last-resort effort at spying on his son. Father-and-son scenes are painfully vacant of any connection.
Full of hush-hush corruption, bureaucratic indifference in this prison is certainly given its full measure here. With grotesque displays of inmate power struggles, the film’s plot advancement is ripe for melodrama of the highest order. Yet Jonathan Asser’s screenplay, buoyed by the three amazing performances, avoids pitfalls of the overly straightforward. Asser himself volunteered as a therapist at HM Prison Wandsworth in London and it shows. In Starred Up, redemption and connection come in unexpected ways, and with each success comes a flip-side of sadness and desperation. Oddly the most inhumane of hellholes provides the perfect backdrop for its characters’ deep-rooted inner demons to transform, like suddenly blooming flowers in a dump heap, into a grounded expression of the boundless human spirit.