Animal Factory

A long time in the distribution, Steve Buscemi’s sophomore directing effort turned up at the Ritz with almost no warning last week. Herewith, a belated review: Shot on location in Holmesburg Prison, Animal Factory adapts the novel by convict-turned-author Edward Bunker (who played Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs) about life in San Quentin. The cast includes both the expected (a bald-headed Willem Dafoe, convict-turned-actor Danny Trejo, Buscemi himself) and the not (Edward Furlong, Mickey Rourke, Tom Arnold), and the story mostly focuses on the relationship between new fish Furlong (the weed-dealing son of a wealthy businessman) and old hand Dafoe, a hard-as-nails recidivist who takes the young boy under his wing. Though it’s miles above sensationalist crap like Oz, Animal Factory almost goes too far in the other direction; despite the omnipresent threat of violence and rape, the film plays down its scenes of violence, as if to convey the mixture of fear and boredom that is long-term incarceration. The just-the-facts storytelling ends up a little underwhelming, though, not telling us much more about prison life than that it ain’t like the outside.

—Sam Adams