Short Eyes

Short Eyes is to prison pictures what the atom bomb is to weaponry— powerful and frightening from one end to the other. In fact, I'm surprised the movie got made at all since it's got all the commercial appeal of live surgery. But once you start watching, you can't stop. The characters are real and riveting, the setting an actual prison (The Tombs), and the violence sudden and brutal. It's almost like being in prison, except thankfully you're not.

The story is about one floor of the lockup where the packed-in racial groups appear poised for combat like Europe in 1914. There's a tense truce as long as Whites, Blacks, and Browns observe the unwritten rules and don't invade the wrong space. Too bad they're not making music all the time because that's the only time they seem in harmony. Then into this tense mix comes a guy everyone can despise, a child-molester (Davison). Worse, he's a white guy who even looks like "the man". So he's got as much chance of surviving as a minnow has among sharks-- that is, if the authorities don't pull him out first. And, kind of surprisingly, we wish they would since after listening to his "story", he seems more pathetic than wicked.

Two things to note. Catch how difficult it is for any kind of humanity to survive amid racially charged, oppressive conditions that the authorities (guards, supervisors) only make worse. Juan (Perez) wants to cling to some vestige, but he's got to do it within the unwritten rules. And, in this testosterone-soaked atmosphere, the problem isn't just ethnic, it's other guys in general. However, the most nightmarish part is the threat of emasculation, men being denied their identity and turned into substitute women. That scene in the shower between Cupcakes and Paco may be more unsettling than even the knifing in Psycho (1960). I expect this loss of sexual identity may be the most unnerving part of a genuinely frightening movie, by which Hollywood's prison films pale in comparison.

The performances in film version of Short Eyes are perhaps some of the best I've seen. Short Eyes, in prison slang, means child molester. The whole play revolves on a white pedophile Clark Davis interacting in a prison whose majority are Puerto Ricans and Blacks, and Davis' interaction with Juan who attempts to come to terms with Davis' need for sex with children.

There are several memorable characters such as the very young and tender Julio, known as Cupcakes by the prisoners, who is the target of unwanted homosexual attention by several, if not all, prisoners. El Raheem is a strong black man, perhaps a Black Panther, who studies the Koran all day long and acts on his feelings of anger towards white people. Longshoe Murphy is a tough young Irish. And of course Clark Davis and Juan, who are the main characters of the play.

Pinero, who plays GoGo in his the film version of his play, wrote this play while in Sing Sing prison at around 1974 for armed robbery, and first was performed by a cast of prisoners. Short Eyes had a very short success on Broadway.

The only problem of the movie is the cinematography-it is rather boring, especially in this time where special FX of Lord of the Rings is rather common. But there are two or three rather beautiful scenes, one with a prisoner posing in front of a poster. Despite the very dated lackluster cinematography, I wouldn't hesitate to buy this film.

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.

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).

"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.