The System

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.

Who is kidnapper holding Gibson's and Howard's family members hostage??? It's the only reason I can afford for them being tied to this piece of trash. Really bad acting, writing, cinematography, sets, etc...etc... The eighties A-Team or Hardcastle and McCormack had better production value and scripts!!! The prison laundry scene looked like a laundromat. The prison yard looked like a high school gym area with temp fencing. Low budget doesn't begin to describe this terrible film... A more appropriate title would be 80 minutes of Tyrese Making Stinkface... I want my 80 minutes back with interest!

Absolutely terrible movie with a nonsensical "plot" drawn up by a moron with half eaten crayons.

At no point did anything make logical sense.

This never should've made it past being drafted.

I don't know who was blackmailing the A and B listers into agreeing to this piece of s..., but they must have some amazing dirt on them.

The "big reveal" came about from Tyrese giving a woman a Sim card full of "evidence l"... that's not how they work, at best they hold some phone numbers, but hey, in a stupid movie with minimal actual plot/logic/thinking involved, sure, let's roll with it.

I can guarantee everyone involved with this garbage heap wishes they didn't have their name attached to it, or that it wasn't available to the public anymore.

I always make an effort to give some slack to newb filmmakers, but they need to at least bring something fresh to the table. Writer and director Dallas Jackson gave us a film that's been done many times before, and many times better. There was nothing new or engaging in the dragged out 97 min runtime, but cliched characters with cheesy dialogue, a predictable and bland script, with sub-par performances all around. It was clear that Jackson was inexperienced directing his cast effectively, but at least Terrence Howard and Jeremy Piven gave it their best attempt; Tyrese Gibson gave his lousiest, laziest and most boring performance to date, like it was his first acting gig. He made it seem like he'd rather just be at home calling in his lines - even him just walking around so slow in his scenes felt like he was struggling to stay awake. Had Gibson put in just half the effort (even with some facial expressions) like the rest of the cast did, this may have been more watchable. But instead, it was a boring slog with mediocre action and a barely existent narrative. It's a very generous 5/10 from me.

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.