THE ESCAPIST

Kilmainham Gaol is an impressively oppressive setting for this solid thriller, writes Donald Clarke.

CONVENTIONAL wisdom has it that mainstream films require frequent changes of scenery, occasional interaction between the sexes and the odd exterior shot. It is, thus, surprising quite how many prison movies have won a place in the public's heart.

Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, Birdman of Alcatraz, Midnight Express: the list is not exactly endless, but it's long enough to throw over a high wall and facilitate a quick escape.

What you get in a good prison movie is focus. Without any outside distractions from romantic subplots (the occasional sexual relations in these movies are rarely tender) the characters can get down to escaping, proving their innocence or creating a pleasing environment for the local fauna.

The Escapist, a low-budget co-production between Ireland and the UK, proves to be an honourable addition to the genre. The British gangster thriller is still recovering from the swell of geezers that engulfed that nation in the aftermath of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, so it is reassuring to encounter a thriller that manages to be entertaining while avoiding East End whimsy. Here is a film with all the crunchy bits left in.

Rupert Wyatt's feature debut focuses on the efforts of Brian Cox's aging lifer to escape a satisfactorily grim high-security detention centre some distance from London. Having survived inside for 14 years, he is finally persuaded to make his move after receiving a letter describing his daughter's descent into drug addiction.

Joining him is a stereotypical array of movie convicts, among them Joseph Fiennes as a tough, silent enigma and Dominic Cooper as a bullied newcomer. The prison they are fleeing is organised along the principles laid out by the writers of Porridgeand Oz(and, for all I know, the inhabitants of actual jails). The inevitable top dog, as brutal and unreasonable as you would expect, takes on the surprising, though not unconvincing, form of old Etonian Damian Lewis. The screws are faceless drones. The doors clang unharmoniously. And so forth.

So what's new? Wyatt and his co-writer Daniel Hardy have taken a familiar story and, by folding the narrative upon itself and doing unusual things in post-production, turned it into an utterly singular piece of work. Only a woefully misguided surprise ending spoils an otherwise compulsive entertainment.

The story, initially befuddling, is told in two parallel strands. One line follows the convicts as they carry out their escape; the other, which details the preparations for the break-up, simultaneously elucidates and obfuscates some of the surprises they encounter. A conceit that could, in less skilled hands, end up seeming arch, brings verve, intrigue and ambiguity to a classic three-act narrative.

More impressive still is the audio design. Whereas most low-budget films sleep happily if the dialogue remains perceptible, Hardy, sound designer Theo Green and composer Benjamin Wallfisch have conspired to create an expressionist clamour, which heightens the sense that we are in some drugged nightmare.

Dublin's Kilmainham Gaol, the principal location, no longer looks like a modern prison, and the archaic ambience presses yet another layer of deliberate unreality over proceedings. This jail is as disconcertingly placeless as the detention centre in A Clockwork Orange.

For all that, like many films in its price range, The Escapistdoes feel a little unfinished. The performances, though deliberately one-note, are uniformly sound, but there are raggedy edges to the production that might unnerve punters stuffed on too much Iron Manor an excess of The Incredible Hulk.

That is, perhaps, one more reason to buy a ticket. A little cinematic roughage never did anybody any harm.