Short Eyes

This is not an easy film. It doesn't hold the audiences hand, dropping you straight into a rich environment without explaining or providing many sign posts. Davison delivers a really extraordinary monologue that makes his ultimate guilt crystal clear, but his ultimate fate is not really a matter of retribution. It's more that he becomes the easiest target for a system of seething anger and recriminations and power struggles to act on.

It feels very much like a play (which it is), and not so much like a movie, but it's a play written by someone who knows whereof he writes, and the claustrophobic "theater" element often works in its favor. Bruce Davison is fantastic.

A different and quite courageous prison film. It is marred by the musical bits in the middle, and an often almost lighthearted tone, that don't sit well with the highly disturbing subject matter. Still, it really tests you and plays with your sympathies, and that's wonderful.