The System

I decided to watch this movie because of the appearance of the excellent actor Terrence Howard. He does act well (again), but the rest of this movie is a stinker...

The bad: this story does not make sense. It's gibbledigook nonsensical. And mind you, this story is meant to be taken seriously, but it ends up being a laughing stock.

More bad; 2 actors are performing well, but the rest of the cast is hopelessly below average. This movie is rushed or at least void of any talent in writing and directing.

Not even the action is worth the watch. I am a fan of action B-movies, but this movie is just completely lacking in any sort of exciting action as well. What a dud!

Nothing exactly fresh or new about this film. It's quite a generic and standard unoriginal prison film which was apparently straight to video. The plot isn't anything creative or something which makes things memorable. Certainly there is an audience for these type of films but there are films in this same genre which have been done better before. Many cliches to be had.

Tyrese Gibson plays an undercover soldier where throughout the film he puts on a look of disgust. Jeremy Piven plays the over the top warden with a southern accent. Then Terrence Howard seemed to be the mentor spewing knowledge but he seemed to phone in his performance. It wasn't encouraging as it was perhaps meant to be.

In the end, even though it's relatively a short runtime it felt repetitive and rather long.

Almost worth it for a scene where Jeremy Piven's character is pretending to be in the same room as the rest of the cast. The budget was certainly blown on the couple of recognisable faces present. Unfortunately it's a low bar all round for this one. The costumes look a bit naff and the acting is largely terrible. There's an under current to the script which isn't too bad an idea addressing the corporation of the prison system in the US coupled with the treatment of ex-army Vets however direction, location, lighting and the juxtaposition of over earnest with plain bad acting unfortunately ends up delivering a difficult watch. A couple of funny moments (maybe not intentional mind) and a few passable fight sequences.

Jeremy Piven was unrecognizable. Wow. Terance Howard popped up. Again, wow. Standard script. Watching these former A-listers bring the whole movie up a star was fun. Gibson is not a leading man. He mumbles and poses his way through. Just not a very good movie. Found myself checking email and surfing while it was droning on. The fact an inmate carries a cell phone around for an hour was not beyond me. The fact all the bad guys were white and all the heroes were black was not missed. Just a paint by numbers, straight to DVD and streaming movie about a former soldier who gets into trouble and has to go underground. Meh.

Sometimes just sad, but usually mean and you never see him smiling.

Sadly, this movie deserves the 3.5 rating it currently has. I gave it a 4 as I'm a sucker for prison movies. The plot is unoriginal and unrealistic with gaping plot holes. The shocking plot twists are predictable and boring.

Have we ever seen a movie where the upstanding guy ends up in a prison with an unscrupulous warden? But this is no Shawshank Redemption. Have we ever seen a secret fight league run by the guards/warden? Yeah, but I can't even remember those movies names. This is worse than those.

One oddity is that they have the fighters wear body armor. Just weird. One stupid goof is they have Tyrese benching what looks to be 135 lbs. And struggling at it. I'm 5' 6", in ok shape, and I can do that easily.

They pulled in two actors with credible resumes; Jeremy Piven and Terrence Howard. Neither have decent showings. Pivens' fake southern accent and clownish behavior are amateurish. Howard's big brother teacher role is average at best.

Anyway, it was mildly entertaining for what it is.