Review : Starred Up

STARRED UP

Starred Up is a well-made British prison drama about a troubled teen who becomes old enough to enter the adult prison system - the clue lies within the title being a slang term for that transition. 

The film is extremely hard and unflinchingly realistic, containing violence and full-frontal male nudity. 

Characters fight fairly frequently, and sometimes the fights come to blows, with blood shown.  Language is extremely strong and constant, including multiple uses of the f word and the c word. So I think you can tell that this is not a film appropriate for children, maybe when there older they can give it a watch, but at a young age perhaps not.

So what's the story? Well it's about this teenager called Eric Love (Played by Jack O'Connell) who is no stranger to prison in the slightest, but now he's old enough to be transferred from youth prison to the real big house, or as I believe the term is called "starred up," as it's known in prison slang. Guarded and coiled and already with extensive prison experience under his belt, it's not long before Eric's explosive nature gets him in trouble.

If you've seen prison films such as 'The Shawshank Redemption' you'd be able to familiarise yourself with Prison life as a viewer, how life on inside where you have no contact with the outside world and the only people you've got for company are a load of hardened criminals and killers who'd stab you in the back as soon as look at you. Knowing all this, I tend to find this British prison drama very thrilling. The drama is very real and exaggerated and therefore goes over the limit because it can. 

I think as a viewer the way that this film is made is it's done because it wants to you understand prison life and to make you understand prison life and the extraordinary extreme lengths of it for instance this done in such a way like the director David Mackenzie exaggerating violence, In one fight, a character bites down on a man's crotch and stays there until the fight is over. And also a contrast is made between moments of quiet suttle scenes to concentrate on the story telling in a bit more detail.

In summery this a bold film to watch for which everything shot and every scene counts, it all sets off on a perfect pace and is overly well executed. 8/10

Next Review : Slumdog Millionaire.