Also this issue:

Back in Black
Screenwriter Walter Bernstein sees a return to an “attempted blacklist.”
-Sam Adams

The Devil You Don't
Daredevil is anything but a good time.
-Sam Adams

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Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

Repertory Film

Showtimes

February 13-19, 2003

movies

The Hard Cell

Prison bound: Avery (Richard T. Jones) gets his day in court.

Lockdown has prison grit, and some fine touches.

by Cindy Fuchs

How many prison films have you seen that open with a swimmer slicing through the water? Chances are, not many. And yet, there it is: Lockdown, directed by John Luessenhop and written by Preston A. Whitmore II (who made the thoughtful Vietnam War drama, The Walking Dead), begins with Avery (Richard T. Jones) in a peaceful, deeply blue pool, as if in a dream.

The camera cuts to a bedroom, panning happy-couple photos and trophies on its way to framing Avery in bed with his girl, Krista (Melissa DeSousa). Together they plan their future: A scout will be at the afternoon's swim meet; Avery hopes to go to college on a scholarship. The night ends in a disaster brought on by crazy coincidence. Two guys in a white Mustang shoot a fast-food clerk, and that night, Avery and his buddies, Cashmere (Gabriel Casseus) and Dre (De'Aundre Bonds), are riding in a white Mustang, into which the clever shooters have dropped their gun. Cops pull them over, and a short courtroom montage later, they're on the bus to a New Mexico prison.

Inside, each is assigned to a different sort of cellmate. Cash hooks up with Clean Up (Master P, also executive producer on the film), the joint's major drugs and goods mover. Dre ends up with Graffiti (David Shark Fralick), the resident Aryan asshole who makes the kid his bitch. Avery gets the mentor type, Malachi (Clifton Powell), who schools him by reading from Invisible Man: "Mine is a warm hole, and I say this to you because it is incorrect to assume that because I am invisible and live in a hole, I am dead."

Though Avery suffers abuse from guards and fellow prisoners (Clean Up roughs him up on the basketball court), he is fortunate enough to have folks working his case on the outside: his girl, as well as a swim scout, Charles (Bill Nunn), whose daughter happens to be an attorney with time to spend on her dad's interests. He also benefits from a series of narrative contrivances -- his supporters locate the real shooter (Sticky Fingaz) as well as a judge who actually reads new documents, no questions asked.

While the types and situations are familiar to anyone who's seen a prison movie or an episode of Oz, the film takes its political and moral business seriously, with demonstration not only of the gang affiliations and brutal hierarchies in prison, but also to the contraband economy that sustains the violence and criminal activities. Charles observes, "It's not supposed to be easy. It's prison." Lockdown's melodrama underlines that the system is premised on abuse, cruelty, and a presumption that all prisoners, guilty or not, "deserve" what they get, for being in wrong places at wrong times.

Perhaps most rewarding are the many fine performances, in particular by Jones (best known recently for his co-starring role on Judging Amy), and young Bonds (Junior in Get on the Bus). Master P, last seen on the big screen for a minute in Undisputed, acquits himself admirably. His longstanding interest in film production (I Got the Hook-Up, Foolish) is evolving into increasingly serious business.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

Lockdown

Directed by John Luessenhop A Rainforest Films release Opens Friday at area theaters