Every now and then, a new voice in filmmaking will be heralded as "breathing new life" into a particular genre—meaning, of course, that said filmmaker somehow invests a familiar set of tropes and trappings with a fresh creative spark, taking something we might think of as being tired or old-hat and showing us a new way to look at it. That phrase has been tossed around more than once in the breathless praise lavished upon Rupert Wyatt, a young, emergent talent from England whose fourth film, The Escapist, premiered at last year's Sundance festival to considerable critical acclaim.
I admit that it isn't hard to fathom why so many critics would praise the movie for doing something new with its genre—specifically, the prison break-out film. It's not exactly the most flexible or complex of genres—after all, how many variations on The Great Escape can there really be? And Wyatt—to his credit—takes a familiar premise and makes it feel like something we haven't seen before. The movie's plot is simple enough: Brian Cox plays an inmate who enlists several fellow prisoners to help him bust out of jail. Wyatt takes that set-up and makes it into something more complicated and stylish than you'd expect.
Brian Cox as Frank Perry, Damian Lewis as Rizza
And yet, as intriguing as it sounds on paper, it rarely jumps off the screen and becomes something truly engaging. Wyatt's skills are unimpeachable—everything from the music to the cinematography to the time-warping, anachronistic storytelling speaks to his considerable prowess—but what it adds up to is merely an exercise in formalism: It's a movie that exists to reward film buffs, and aficionados of the prison escape niche in particular, but for everyone else, its formal experiments are likely to seem cold and calculated.
Here's the thing: If you're going to invert and subvert the trappings of a particular genre, you first have to know what makes that genre work. I'm sure Wyatt has watched a lot of prison break movies, and I bet he can pick them apart and explain their construction with the confidence of a top film student. But I'm not sure if he understands how to reassemble it once he's deconstructed it; The Escapist feels an awful lot like a bunch of spare parts that, had they been pieced together more carefully, could have made for a memorable movie.
Joseph Fiennes as Lenny Drake
With any film like this, the suspense is derived in large part from the desire to know exactly how they're going to do it—and whether or not they'll succeed. In The Escapist, however, the footage of the great escape is interspersed with footage from their time within the prison, leading up to their daring break—so, we know early on who all the key players are, what their plan for escape is, and, indeed, before the film is even halfway over, we know that at least some of them make it to the outside world.
Thus, Wyatt's film needs to find its drama elsewhere, and though it tries to find it in character development, it simply never engages our emotions or creates characters we particularly care about. Cox plays the lead—a lifer named Frank—with a raggedly stoic bent, which is how the character is written; he does a fine job, but, by his very nature, Frank is someone we can never really warm up to. We hear early on that he wants to escape to see his daughter, who has apparently fallen on hard times, but we never meet her or even hear many details of what's going on with her; in short, the film never fosters in us a real, burning desire to see this man succeed. Whether or not he escapes to see his daughter simply isn't interesting enough for the viewer.
Doesn't look like an effective escape plan
That leaves the ending, where Wyatt tries to draw together all the scattered puzzle pieces and give us a big, devastating payoff. And on some level it works—the big trick ending is indeed surprising, and it causes us to think back to what we've just watched and piece together how everything is supposed to fit—but by that point, most viewers won't care enough about these characters or the story to exert that much effort.
That the whole movie is harsh and humorless only adds to the feeling that it's not a film designed for our entertainment or edification; it's simply an experiment in throwing a familiar premise into a blender and seeing how it looks once it's all chopped up. On that level, it's a success, but Wyatt lacks the mastery needed to turn a formal experiment into a worthwhile movie.
Note: The Escapist is showing in very limited release in theaters, but is also available on demand on cable TV through IFC.
Talk About It
Discussion starters
The film's ending seems to subvert our expectations of what "escape" means. What are the different kinds of escape and freedom that the film presents?
Are Frank's motives for wanting to escape prison noble? Why or why not?
Are there any good or heroic characters in the film? Discuss.
The Family Corner
For parents to consider
The Escapist is not rated by the MPAA, but would certainly have received an R rating for a heavy amount of foul language, rear nudity, and a couple of brief scenes of violence and gore. It is definitely not for children.
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