Borstal

The cover of this DVD does not really provide an accurate description of the movie. Goodness knows how anyone could review anything based on a cover! I have watched this film and whilst it appears to be a tough youth prison story like 'Scum' and 'Dog Pound' it is far from that. First thing anyone interested has to get to grips with is just how low budget this is. The scenes are sparsely furnished and you often get shots of the outside of dull buildings before the interior is shown. The telephones on desks are from the 50's and not typical of the ones that the GPO provided in the late 60's and early 70's when this was supposed to be set. It is noticeable just how few extras there are in the movie and how few actors there are. The story is fairly average with a few minor moments of violence which were not very convincing. I noticed that the film was overexposed in some parts and that also made the cost factor apparent. Some of the acting was relatively decent and the plot far from full of hostility and violence is quite warm. I doubt if this would be good enough to get a showing on UK Terrestrial TV channels and looks set to be a DVD only release. All things considered the movie is a huge let down if the DVD cover and notes have been the primary buying decision.

The quietest most orderly borstal I've ever come across. Appears to have a total of about ten inmates divided into two sets of characters. There's the ruffians always spoiling for trouble and the proper speaking good guys. The staff are generally all sergeant major types, barking out their orders. Not forgetting a big showdown between factions which ended by the baddy leader being....pushed.

Need to try harder than this.

I like to think of myself as a good guy. This is probably defined as "Someone who feels guilty about the things they didn't do rather than the things they did do". Once in a while I do feel very guilty about something I did . Normally it involves one of my reviews hurting the feelings of someone who worked on a film. I once wrote a comment on a film called HOOLIGANS AT WAR NORTH VS SOUTH , and was scathing one of the production team wrote me a very polite private message saying the production was crippled by a very limited shooting schedule and budget. I felt guilty but also pleased to find out later many of the production team are going onto better things. The co-director of HOOLIGANS AT WAR Steven M Smith has just released a new movie called BORSTAL and I felt the need to watch it to see how much he has improved

To be fair to Steven and co it's the marketing that murdered much of the potential of this movie . The DVD cover gives the impression it's going to be a violent prison drama where Darwinian law dictates it's survival of the fittest. The blurb reinforces this too and you're instantly reminded of Alan Clarke's SCUM. As a couple of other comments have mentioned this is misleading and it's impossible not to notice the degree of the misleading advertising

What BORSTAL tries to be is a film about redemption with some feelgood quality to it. Based on a book called TWO'S UP by Kris Gray it involves a newly arrived middle class teenage prisoner called Kris arriving in a borstal. Right away you're thinking he's going to literally fight for his life to stay alive but this isn't how things develop. Borstal was long before my time and I take it TWO'S UP is an auto-biography and if nothing at least the film portrays the inmates as fairly average joes you'd see in the pub. A bit loud , a bit boisterous and a bit dim , but nothing really irremediably evil. In effect just some lads who need a good kick up the backside and in other words a fairly accurate picture of juvenile delinquents

Directorial wise there's something of a problem to all this. Steven M Smith gives the film the look and feel of one of this lightweight dramas you see broadcast on Sunday evenings on ITV and this jars with the use of the F and C words . The casting doesn't help in that the cast all come across as nice guys you'd happily share a drink with . not something you could say about SCUM. The director also bludgeons the audience over the head as to the tone of the scene with over emphatic music that dictates what sort of tone the scene involves . This becomes very annoying very quickly

When all is said and done however it's the marketing of BORSTAL that lets everything down. There's little in the way of viscous , nihilistic violence that made SCUM so unforgettable and cynics might say it's such a nice place populated by such nice guys they built walls to keep everyone else out

The acting was terrible and really not sure how Patrick Kirkpatrick turned up here with an English accent as the governor set in the UK in a seventies Borstal for young offenders.

This misses the mark on so many levels... What is it trying to be? This question is core to the films long string of misses...

As has been stated elsewhere, the actors are good, their track records on other mainstream and indie fare is widely recognised and their performances here are what makes this uneven and inconsistent film vaguely watchable.

There is so much potential material in the original story (not that it was particularly well conceived, but... ), that could have been explored and exploited... but it has been muddled into a visionless and amorphous mass...

Forth wall only works when it is juxtaposed against stark reality, consistent plot and character development.

This lacks the direction, dedication and understanding of genre necessary to make it work...