Rating: (3.5 out of 5)

Starring: Sean Penn, Reni Santoni, Jim Moody, Eric Gurry, Ally Sheedy, Clancy Brown, Robert Lee Rush, and Esai Morales.

Directed by: Rick Rosenthal

Sean Penn at his intense best…

I think this is sort of the forgotten movie of Sean Penn’s career. Isn’t it? But even here we see the fierce acting style that has made Penn one of the best actors of his generation. The movie itself is a straight prison potboiler, with events conspiring to force the “hero” into a dramatic showdown with his antagonist. But it is so well acted and tightly paced that it is really more memorable than the plot itself deserves.

Penn plays Mick O’Brien, who is, for lack of a better term, a juvenile delinquent. In the opening scene he smashes a car window and steals a woman’s handbag. When a good Samaritan is foolish enough to pursue Mick down a dark alley and into a deserted parking lot, Mick cracks him in the head with a tire iron and steals his wallet too. The other main character is Paco Moreno (Esai Morales). Paco is a drug dealing gang member. The first time we see him, he’s scored a suitcase full of pills and powder and is looking to move the stuff for a big profit. He makes plans to sell it to a black gang the next night.

Mick and J.C. before all the problems

Mick and Paco go to the same high school, and Paco sort of has a thing for Mick’s girl J.C. (Ally Sheedy). This is actually one of Ally’s first screen roles (War Games also came out in 1983), back when she was still a fresh young face rather than dark, indie princess she’s sort of become. She starred in Macon Country Jail (1997), so we’ll be revisiting Ally’s career later on this site. In any case, J.C. only becomes central to the Mick-Paco relationship later on. The impetus for the plot is that Mick and his buddy Carl (Alan Zuck, best known as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)), decide to rip off Paco and his gang.

Apparently Mick was too busy ripping off old ladies to take driver’s ed.

Mick and Carl set up watch on Paco’s apartment, and when Paco and his buddies go out to make the sale, Mick and Carl follow. As Paco is walking down the street, Mick strikes. At the same time, the black gang that is supposed to meet Paco is also thinking about ripping him off. Man, there is no honor among thieves. As Mick approaches Paco and his boys, the black gang members spot him. Concerned about being preempted, they spill out of their car and start shooting. What follows is a wild three-way shoot out with all three groups firing at one another and bystanders diving for cover. Carl gets shot, as does one of Paco’s mates. The black guys drive away and Paco and his remaining buddy take off on foot. With the sirens wailing in the background, Mick runs back and tries to help his friend, but Carl has taken a shotgun blast to the chest; his lawbreaking days are over. Mick hops into their car and peels out, just ahead of a police car. The police chase Mick for a few blocks. He’s a couple of car lengths ahead, when suddenly another cop car appears right in front of him. He swerves off the road, but as he jumps the curb, he hits a small boy head on, and crashes the car into a parked van setting off a big explosion. The kid, needless to say, is dead. And he’s not just any kid; he’s Paco’s younger brother who was trailing his older brother and ended up in the path of Mick’s car.

Hmmm. “Justice with Mercy.” I wonder if any prisons have “Justice without Mercy” as their motto?

The next scene has a battered Mick facing a juvenile court judge. Given his lengthy criminal history of assaults and robbery, and his felony murder of a young kid (even though he killed the kid by accident, it happened in the course of committing a felony), he is definitely going to get some time. As the judge says, “you have committed the crimes of an adult.” Unfortunately for the judge, Mick is a juvenile, and the best he can do is sentence him Rainford Juvenile Correctional Facility.

Mick’s arrival in the pokey is standard prison movie fare. First, he meets with one of the guards/counselors (Gene Daniels, played by Jim Moody) who tells him the rules. The prison is run on a point system of sorts, and points mean extra time. You get points for violating the rules, fighting, and so on. One of the rules is against “sexual harassment.” I presume it has a different meaning here than it does nowadays. (I swear it was just an innocent compliment when I told my secretary I liked her tight sweaters. Six weeks of sensitivity training. Feh!) But does it refer to sexual assault? Presumably not, since the logic of a point system is that you can violate the rules if you are willing to accumulate the points, but obviously the guards can’t simply be willing to accept assaults, can they? Well, maybe they can. We’ll get back to that. Another one of the rules is against smoking, but everyone in the prison smokes. Presumably, the divergence between the rules and the reality are supposed to be a signal that within the prison walls, it’s the rule of the jungle. In any case, Daniels comes off as firm but fair, and as the movie progresses the guards gradually work to transform Mick.

Yes, that is spit flying in from the right.

The new prisoners have to walk a gauntlet to their rooms (yes, rooms, not cells, I’ll get to that in a second). It is a particularly nasty type of welcome. In most prison movies, the gauntlet is simply psychologically unpleasant, as the inmates yell insults and threats at the new prisoners. But here, it is actually physically intimidation, as the inmates jostle the new arrivals, throw things at them, and spit on them. Mick is stoic. He knows better than to show emotion to the others. He walks to his room and shuts the door.

Looks a little like my freshman dorm

Instead of cells, each prisoner lives in a room with another prisoner. The doors don’t ever seem to be locked, and the toilets are in another room. The doors themselves have windows with wire running through them. These are not cells strictly speaking, and the prisoners are never actually locked down. Presumably this is a nod to the fact that this is a juvenile facility. The rooms are on two levels, facing a central area. And actually, if it weren’t for the crazed inhabitants, it could be an older style dorm in a run-down college. The inmates even have access to ping pong and foosball tables as well as soda machines (product placement for RC Cola… are they still in business?)

Mick’s roommate is Horowitz. (I think his first name is Barry, but everyone calls him by his last name in prison. Mick also goes by O’Brien at this point. Anyway, Horowitz is played by Eric Gurry.) It is an interesting choice. Most recent movies don’t have Jews in prison for some reason. In any case, Horowitz isn’t that bad a kid really. He’s just small, and he’s in prison for burning down a bowling alley. He was trying to torch three guys who beat him up, but instead killed three innocent people. He’s smart but twisted. Gurry does a great job with Horowitz; he reminded me a lot of a couple physically unimposing kids I knew in high school who always seemed on the verge of snapping. Horowitz snapped.

Clancy Brown (Viking). He was also in Shawshank, minus the Big Bird hair.

The next day, Mick gets up for roll call. Every morning the prisoners have to line up and get counted. There are two, um, “trustees” I guess I would call them, who run the place: Viking Lofgren (Clancy Brown who also has a large role in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and a smaller role teaming up again with Penn in another prison movie: Dead Man Walking (1995)) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). Their role is only semi-official. They have certain official responsibilities such as lining up and counting the prisoners in the morning, and they also have the power to hand out work assignments. But Viking and Tweety also have an unofficial role in “keeping order” and also get a piece of the action of all drug and cigarette sales. Speaking of which, Mick smokes menthol cigs… which doesn’t seem all that consistent with his tough guy persona, seems a little feminine if you ask me.

Viking and Tweety give Mick a hard time…

The movie now proceeds on two tracks. On the inside, Mick slowly gets used to prison life. He tries to keep his head down and do his time, but Viking takes an instant dislike to him. At first, this simply results in extra bathroom mopping duty, but it later takes a more ominous turn. One perquisite of being “barn boss” is that Viking and Tweety can basically do as they please to the other prisoners. At one point Tweety rapes a younger prisoner, and when the victim comes at Tweety with a knife, he gets thrown to his death over a railing. Although most of the prisoners hate Viking and Tweety, the code of silence prevails and no one admits to seeing anything. Even Mick keeps quiet, but for some reason Viking and Tweety suspect him of talking. (Why? They don’t seem to get punished.)

…Mick returns the favor prison style.

Viking and Tweety follow Mick around menacingly, making clear their bad intentions. But Mick is a step ahead of them. He buys a bunch of soda cans, and as they come to his room to work him over, he beats the tar out of them with a homemade weapon consisting of the cans in a pillow case. It is a brutal scene and it ends with Mick being led off to solitary and Viking and Tweety rolling around on the floor, battered and bloody. (When I was a teen, I thought this was a really cool scene. I guess I still do.) When Mick gets out of solitary, he finds that he is now “barn boss.” I guess this is the one thing that doesn’t make sense. Since the position has both official and unofficial parts to it, how does beating up the previous trustees get him promoted? If the warden and guards are willing to recognize whoever manages to get to the top with his fists, it would seem to encourage lot of fighting? You’d think it would be just the opposite, with the guards punishing Mick additionally for challenging Viking and Tweety’s authority, right? In a weird way, the guards seem to encourage a certain amount of violence, maybe as a form of rehabilitation? You’d hate for the prisoners to have too easy a time. In any case, Mick is now the head honcho in the jail.

Meanwhile, on the outside, we see J.C. mooning over the imprisoned Mick. As you might imagine her dad isn’t really broken up to see Mick sent away, but the movie wisely avoids oversimplifying things; he does acknowledge J.C.’s pain as well. More significantly, Paco is out seeking revenge for the deaths of his friend and his brother. He tracks down one member of the black gang, and kills him in a drive-by shooting. Getting at Mick is tougher, since Carl is already dead and Mick is in prison. But Mick does have one thing he values on the outside: J.C. One night when J.C. is coming home late, Paco and a buddy trail her. She realizes she’s being followed and tries to run away, but she foolishly runs away from the main road and down a deserted alley. They track her down and throw her to the ground. She tries to fight, but Paco beats her into submission, and with his buddy holding a gun on her, Paco rapes her. When he’s done, he orders his accomplice to shoot her, but before he can pull the trigger, they’re busted by the cops. The cops shoot Paco’s buddy, and arrest him. Needless to say, the cops want J.C. to press charges, but before she can, she wants to talk to Mick.

Mick comforts a battered J.C.

The news devastates him when he gets it. He tells Horowitz that he wants to get out, and luckily Horowitz has a plan. Horowitz steals some acid from the prison machine shop. On a morning jog between the inner and outer fence, he pretends to twist an ankle, and as he’s leaning against the outer fence he spreads some acid on the links. The next day, Horowitz and Mick make a run for it. Horowitz ends up getting tangled in some barbed wire, but Mick makes it back to Chicago. He makes a beeline for J.C.’s house. He almost loses it when he sees her battered face, and of course, he’s recaptured right away by one of the guards who was waiting for him there. It is touching scene and well acted by all parties. The guard who captures him (Ramon Herrera played by Reni Santoni) is understanding, and gives him a few moments with J.C. before leading him away.

On the way back to the prison, Herrera takes Mick to the Illinois State Penitentiary. It isn’t quite a “scared straight” deal. Herrera doesn’t get in his face really, but he does let Mick know that if he doesn’t straighten up in a hurry, he’s going to end up in a place like this for a long, long time.

Back at the prison Mick is in for a nasty surprise. Having been arrested and sentenced for rape, Paco has been sent to the Rainford as well. This is a bit of stretch, of course, given their history. The guards explain it by saying there is temporarily no other space in any other facility. Paco rooms with Viking (Tweety has since been released and killed in a robbery on the outside). Both Paco and Viking want revenge against Mick, but Viking gets taken out of the game when Horowitz leaves a booby-trapped radio in his room which blows off half of Viking’s face. The tension builds now. The other prisoners begin laying odds. For some reason, Paco is the favorite. Finally things come to a head. Paco’s transfer has come through. He finds out about it the night before it is supposed to happen.

Mick and Paco square off.

That night, Paco fakes an illness. As the guard comes out of his enclosed area to check on him, Paco cracks him in the head with a metal bar. The guard goes down, and Paco locks him up. He then goes after Mick. Mick, of course, is waiting for him. What follows is a ferocious, bloody fight. Paco is armed with a nasty shiv, but Mick is quick, and as they spill out of Mick’s room he grabs a dumbbell bar to use against Paco. In the meantime all the other prisoners crowd around Mick and Paco urging them to kill one another. Paco stabs Mick in both legs. Mick in turn cracks Paco’s arm with the dumbbell. They both end up on the floor unarmed after a while, with Paco bashing Mick’s head against the floor, and Mick kneeing Paco in the face. Finally, Mick gets the upper hand, and straddling Paco’s chest gets a hold of the shiv. For a few moments, Mick holds Paco’s life in his hands. The other inmates are baying for him to finish it off, and the guards are desperately trying to get into the prison (the inmates have barricaded the doors). But in the end, Mick spares Paco’s life, burying the shiv into the floor next to his head. He then drags Paco’s battered body over to the guard’s station and walks back to his room as the ending credits role.

Mick holds Paco’s life in his hands.

So, what do we make of this movie? Well, first of all, it is a very good movie. Well acted and paced. Despite the presence of several clichés and an unoriginal plot, the movie doesn’t come off as derivative. Ultimately the acting and the characters carry it through. Although many of the characters are recognizable types, they seem real, and have more depth than you might expect. Even Viking has surprising depth, especially in the scenes where we see his difficult adjustment to being a second banana after Mick beats him up. The movie also has a little something for everyone. The gals will be interested in Mick and J.C.’s bond. The younger men in the audience will get a kick out of Mick’s tough guy act, and his ability to handle himself against Viking, Tweety, and Paco. Prison movie aficionados will enjoy the seemingly realistic setting (never having been to juvenile hall myself, I don’t know). Everyone else will enjoy the acting and the effective tension.

Still, it is not a movie you want to think about too much. One of the taglines for the movie is, “Life Has Pushed Him Into A Corner… And He’s Comin’ Out Fighting.” Hmmm. Well, not quite, right? He’s sort of pushed himself into a corner by being a street thug. I mean, yeah, he doesn’t seem to have a father figure around, and one time he comes home to find his boozy mom in the bathtub with a man, but that isn’t really an excuse to commit numerous assaults and robberies. Is it? Plus, his redemption is a little hollow in the end as well. He mostly just wants to get out of prison, and killing Paco would work against that goal. But basically everyone else suffers for his benefit. It is Paco’s brother who dies, and it is J.C. who gets raped. Mick is pretty much triumphant throughout. Does he really learn his lesson, or does he just want to get out so he can mug another old lady? Personally, I am not real confident, and if I saw Mick O’Brien walking down the street, I would definitely cross to the other side.