Brutal, powerful, and compassionate, “Starred Up,” directed by David Mackenzie and starring Jack O’Connell takes its place amongst the best prison films of all time. O’Connell plays Eric Love, and the film opens with him being inducted into a new prison. This scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, showing prison life to be a negotiation between submission and defiance. Eric goes through the various entry requirements with a look of neutral passivity but the instant he finds himself alone in his cell he gets to work making a toothbrush shiv.
Eric isn’t just any new prisoner though, he’s a 19-year-old who’s been “starred up” – transferred from a juvenile facility to an adult prison due to his proclivity for extreme violence. This confers on him a special status; he’s simultaneously vulnerable due to his age but dangerous due to his known rage. As the leader of the prison crime rackets later tells him, in the jungle laws of prison, being starred up marks him as a leader. Eric is special for another reason as well, his father, Neville, is already an inmate in the same prison, a terrifying member of the rackets.
Immediately after his arrival, various modes of authority fight a battle for Eric’s soul. The more brutal of the guards try to subdue Eric by any force necessary, but Eric’s explosive nature allows him to get the upper hand in several fights. Neville sees that Eric’s violence is disrupting the prison ecosystem and tries to pacify him, not out of paternal concern but out of a desire for smoother business. He finds that simple threats are ineffective and then persuades Eric to join a therapy group led by Oliver.
Oliver is a dedicated outsider who has gained the trust of some prisoners because he is unpaid and he puts his body on the line while teaching the prisoners to look inside themselves for alternatives to violence. Though Eric is resistant at first, eventually Oliver’s methods begin to get through to him and he makes some positive changes. Despite having urged him there in the first place, Neville begins to resent the group’s influence on his son as his own control over Eric begins to wane. When Eric runs afoul of the most powerful men in the prison, Neville must reconcile his own desires with his growing concern for his son, leading to a violent and emotional climax.
Shot in a real prison, “Starred Up” feels authentic, both visually and in the detailed hierarchy that Eric stumbles into. The thick British accents may be hard for some Americans to decipher, but it hardly matters because the film is just as strong as a silent film. The camera keeps us in close-ups, like the prisoners, we are in cramped quarters with danger and must be hyper-attuned to the visual cues of men capable of exploding into violence at any instant. “Starred Up” is not for the faint of heart, but a must for anyone interested in the humanity in the most inhuman of environments.
