STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs
Casting an uncompromising glance at the condemning modern stand-point on crime and punishment in the UK,Dominic Savage's Out of Control is very much a modern film for modern times.The first thing you will notice about the TV flick is it's rather unusual camera style,which anyone who saw the Michael Douglas movie Traffic will be familiar with.Once you've gotten past the initial disconcertment of it,it's actually quite ingratiating and likely to be the same style many future movies are shot in.
The movie itself basically plays as an unrelentingly dark and grimy lurk into life inside a young offenders institution.You are really given the full impact that an act of crime (one stupid mistake,you might say) can have on the life of a criminal,and the lives of those closest to them,especially their nearest and dearest.It also plays on the theory of whether or not institutionalising those who offend will make them repent their offence,or merely distort them into rebellious haters of society and everything in it.More than anything,it is also an alert to the potentially horrendous psychological scars imprisonment can leave,and how the mentally and psyically weakest will probably not survive it.By the end,you're just left with a feeling of regret and despair that will stay with you long after you've seen it.
On the performances front,Leo Greggory is impressively mean and chilling as the bullyboy inmate who's own feelings of hopelessness and isolation play with his mental yearnings for violence and empowerment.But the real star of the show is Danny Young ,playing a young man with intelligence and goal,who has unfortunately been brought up in a rough area where these qualities stood next to no chance of being pursued or encouraged,and who may even have really just been coerced into his life of crime.Tamzin Outhwaite certainly packs a punch as the distraught mum,although she is a little young to be playing the mother of a boy of 15 (unless she was meant to have had him as a gymslip mum).
In the end,you come to realize Out of Control is not solely being used to describe the law-breaking youths in the institution,but also perhaps the state that crime,the causes of it and it's punishments have been allowed to deteriorate into.***
