Short Eyes

Based on a Tony nominated play, this obscure film version is crude, tough stuff about life in the NY Tombs, as the Manhattan Detention Center was known then. And it is an appropriate name for a terrible, seemingly corrupt institution. Despite the acclaim, the play only ran for 80 performances, so it wasn't a hit and surely this grainy little seen film wasn't either, but it's well worth watching if you're up for it. It has a slim storyline of a young white pedophile entering for the first time a facility of mostly hardened Hispanic and Black prisoners and how they do or don't accept him. I say slim storyline as most of the film is simply showing us life in this prison, the inmates and their relationships with each other. It ain't pretty. Most of the people in this all male cast have multiple acting credits, which surprised me as they all seem like the real deal. There is not a performance that doesn't ring true. Miguel Pinero was a prisoner at one time, and I suspect so were most of the cast, and while there he wrote this play though his life was short. He also appears in this film and like the rest, is very authentic. I don't know if this film really has a message other than stay the hell out of jail!

Maybe the best prison film ever made because its origin is people who were actually in prison, most notably its main author, Miguel Piñero. The film deals with the interrelationship between the prisoners of a cell block. That's what most of the film is, the observation of these men and their culture. The plot of the film is about a new arrival (Bruce Davison) who has been arrested as a suspect on a child molestation charge. He's never been in prison, and he's very afraid, which, of course, he should be. Short Eyes doesn't make any easy choices at all, which makes for a particularly uncomfortable movie to watch. But it also makes it one of the gutsiest and most important films ever made, and it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's one of only two movies that I've ever watched twice right in a row. Well, the second time was with commentary by the director (and another man, whose participation in the film I don't exactly know), because I wanted to know exactly how this film came about, and to confirm my guess that there was some kind of inside track to prison life behind the scenes. There was far more than I could have guessed; the commentary also ranks as one of the best I've ever listened to. A masterpiece.

When something feels so real, true to its life in all respects, you get let in and buried beneath its weight. "Short Eyes" is a film that takes straight reality, fills it with characters and words of full realization, and takes you down the corridor of a 1 hour, 39 minute hell. Miguel Pinero wrote a script from a world he knew well, words and people from the dark side of America. No one but a former prisoner could have reflected things so pure and so ugly. Robert M. Young as director sets the scene and understands what the story needs. He lets it happen with the freedom begged for.

I could say a lot more, I suppose, but every event hinges on those surrounding it, so to say much is perhaps having to say all. It's a flat painful experience, leaving you with the title character, played by Bruce Davison. Regardless of who you are or what your sin may be, this character is meant to be you. Watch him, feel his hurt, live his guilt, and he might just reflect a little bit of you back. This is not an easy thing.

"Short Eyes" is an interesting film, it has many good points but at the end of the day it suffers from being viewed with the experience of 23 years of other films between the viewer and the production.

Even looking at it based on dramas of the time , it would have been dated then and a moral hodge podge of "hippy" sentiment without the real "streetwise" attitude that it needs and wanted to so much. It even has a dreadful prison "sing-a-long" (only included because Curtis Mayfield leads the scene (otherwise it would not have been shot !) , the song itself is so well produced , and without having a wild track added makes you laugh at the pretentiousness of the scene rather than take it seriously.

Having said that thou , it still has one or two scenes that shock , and I did not expect the ending that we got , and I did like it and would recommend it to everyone , but as long as they understand the time it was from , its a good film but time is not being kind to it.

A movie about prison life. It deals with the inmates--their lives, hates, sexual feelings and the rituals that happen in prison. Clark Davis (Bruce Davison) is thrown in with them--he's suspected of being a child molester ("short eyes" in prison slang). The other prisoners want to kill him...but Davis has talked to one prisoner Juan (Jose Perez) who has serious doubts about his guilt. But can he convince the others?

This was a pretty big art house hit (here in Boston at least) back in 1977. It dealt with (for the time) a taboo subject matter. Then it completely disappeared. That's too bad--it deserves a wider audience.

It was shot in an actual closed-down prison (the Tombs) in NYC. That really helps the mood and feeling of the film. The acting is very good by all--especially Davison, Perez and Joseph Carberry (as Longshoe). But this is a very hard movie to sit through. Davison's confession to Juan is VERY explicit, a sequence where a prisoner is beaten up and tortured by the others is unpleasant and the ending is very disturbing.

It's not a perfect film. It was a stage play first--and it shows. The action never moves away from two areas and occasionally the inmates speak WAY too intelligentally for the characters they're playing. (I seriously doubt that the character Longshoe would ever know the word "quadroon"--or what it meant). Still a very powerful, disturbing drama. Well worth seeking out.

Accomplished character actor Luis Guzman plays one of the inmates (good luck finding him).