Dir. Kim Chapiron , France/Canada/UK, 2010, 91 mins
Cast: Adam Butcher, Shane Kippel, Mateo Morales
Review by Carol Allen
This is effectively an updated version of Alan Clarke's film Scum , with the action and characters moved from a seventies British Borstal to a Montana juvenile offenders' correctional facility in the present day. One can only draw the conclusion that the situation in Montana is as bad as it was here thirty odd years ago, in that there is no attempt to reform the young inmates and the establishment's only purpose appears to be to keep them incarcerated and let them fight it out amongst themselves.
Director Chapiron has established a good, gritty sense of the facility's de press ing environment and cast three nice looking young actors in the leads – Davis (Kippel), who's in for drug dealing, Butch (Butcher) who has anger management problems and has been sent there for assaulting his probation office and baby faced Angel (Morales), who's not as tough as the others and doesn't have as prominent a role. None of the characters though are very appealing, neither the boys nor even the apparently tough but fair warden (Greg Butchet), who eventually also loses self control and descends into brutality.
There's all the usual stuff you would expect – bullying, beatings, the dominant gang ruling the roost and Butch getting his revenge on them. It's well made and acted, all very male – you can almost smell the testosterone - but very predictable. Remembering Scum and other later prison dramas, we are waiting for and dreading the inevitable male rape scene. Also inevitable and predictable is the riot over the death of an inmate with the police yet again brutally overreacting, which forms the climax of the film.
Prison movies don't have to be this nihilistic. Contrast this for example with Steve Buscemi's directing debut Animal Factory (2000) , in which young Edward Furlong survives an equally brutal prison regime by being taken under the wing of hardened convict Willem Dafoe. Dog Pound however is spiritually totally depressing with no hint of redemption or humanity and in danger of eliciting an eventual response from its audience of indifference rather than compassion.
|
.jpg)
