Jailbroken film review: Running out of juice
This confined space thriller doles out the clichés in an attempt to heighten its tension
In the Venn diagram containing hard lads and one-room experimental thrillers, indie multihyphenate Bryan Larkin is a man alone, presumably bicep curling a Blackmagic Camera to pass the time. He plays Joe, a thuggish convict with an Al Capone poster in his cell and a penchant for chatting on his contraband mobile. With three days until his release, he’s joined by new cellmate Naz (Armin Karima), a hacker locked up for a phishing scam gone awry. While a vague race relations subplot develops, Joe discovers that his child and ex-wife have been kidnapped. And so he must use his mobile to reconnect with his violent past and save his family.
It’s a fun idea in the vein of the largely forgotten thriller Phone Booth, but in practice Larkin’s one-man crusade to annihilate his data plan plays like Jason Statham listening to a passable radio drama in his bunk bed. Meanwhile, attempts to ratchet up the tension have the quotidian air of being stranded on a customer service line as Joe negotiates with thinly drawn friends and cardboard cut-out gangland associates.
The sense of a wasted opportunity isn’t helped by plot machinations lifted from The Big Book Of Thriller Clichés: hostage takers lop off a finger to show how serious they are, odd couples make tender alliances, and lumpen laddish banter is doled out with the wilting wit of a Football Factory knock-off. Wading through leaden dialogue and groan-inducing twists is Larkin himself who, while not quite dynamic enough to carry a 90-minute feature, ably steers a deeply repellent caricature towards human territory. But really, he’s poorly served by the material he’s carrying. Unlike Joe’s magical phone that never runs out of charge, there’s very little juice in Vasily Chuprina’s feature-length debut.
Jailbroken reviewed at FrightFest as part of Glasgow Film Festival; picture: Jailbroken Film Ltd.