Starred Up

Shot in a dis­used cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty in Belfast and script­ed by for­mer prison work­er Jonathan Ass­er, Starred Up is direc­tor David Mackenzie’s authen­ti­cal­ly tough look at the penal sys­tem through the eyes of 19-year-old young offend­er Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), whose file has been marked on account of his exces­sive­ly vio­lent behaviour.

We first meet Eric dur­ing pro­cess­ing at the max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty unit to which he’s been trans­ferred for an inde­ter­mi­nate stint. As he’s clin­i­cal­ly strip searched, put into uni­form and escort­ed through long, cold cor­ri­dors and up an exposed steel stair­well to his sin­gle cell, Eric is notice­ably accept­ing of his new sur­round­ings. But his placid­i­ty doesn’t last long. In the next scene he strips off, dous­es him­self in baby oil and gaffer-tapes a splin­tered chair leg to each hand, abu­sive­ly goad­ing the three offi­cers who are about to blitz his cell in full riot gear for his (or is it their?) protection.

Eric’s relent­less­ly com­bat­ive dis­po­si­tion and sub­stan­tial emo­tion­al scar­ring make him a high-risk inmate and the ide­al sub­ject for an exper­i­men­tal group ther­a­py ses­sion run by well-intend­ed but way-out-of-his-depth vol­un­teer Oliv­er (Rupert Friend). Ini­tial­ly resis­tant to Oliver’s irreg­u­lar meth­ods, Eric is start­ing to show signs of reform when the root of his explo­sive self-destruc­tive­ness rears its ugly head in the form of fel­low con Neville (Ben Mendel­sohn), who also hap­pens to be Eric’s old man.

If O’Connell is like a caged wild ani­mal, Mendel­sohn is the inef­fec­tu­al cir­cus train­er whose strict com­mands and stern lash­es don’t so much tame the beast as enrage it fur­ther. While the film boasts strong per­for­mances all round, it’s this volatile cen­tral dynam­ic that proves the most potent. Mendel­sohn is in men­ac­ing form here, but the large­ly unrec­i­p­ro­cat­ed affec­tion he dis­plays towards his son gives him a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is duly exploit­ed by those high­er up the food chain.

Neville may be des­per­ate for Eric to avoid mak­ing the same mis­takes he did, but when the clink’s top dog (Peter Fer­di­nan­do) tells Eric, “‘Starred up’ means you’re a leader,” we’re left with the gut-wrench­ing feel­ing that his fate has already been sealed: that he is des­tined to one day reach the top before in turn being over­thrown. For all the advice and coun­selling he has been giv­en and is yet to receive, Eric is an irrepara­bly dam­aged and acute­ly dan­ger­ous indi­vid­ual for whom help has seem­ing­ly arrived too late.

The film’s most pow­er­ful home truth is this: as long as Eric allows his vio­lent out­bursts to define him, this is where he belongs. Look back at that open­ing scene – it’s Eric’s famil­iar­i­ty with the pro­cess­ing pro­ce­dure, not his per­ceived indif­fer­ence towards it, that makes this short and unset­tling chap­ter in his sto­ry so affecting.

O’Connell’s elec­tri­fy­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty makes this an excit­ing and unpre­dictable por­trait of prison life. But there can be no argu­ment that incar­cer­a­tion is in any way glo­ri­fied here. Starred Up is a bruis­ing, unsen­ti­men­tal work that bril­liant­ly con­tex­tu­alis­es the grim real­i­ty fac­ing scores of young crim­i­nals enter­ing prison today. Unlike the suf­fo­cat­ing prison walls in which the dra­ma unfolds, how­ev­er, this is a film you’ll want to revisit.