FrightFest Glasgow review – Jailbroken
This first feature by Vasily Chuprina – scripted by Raymond Friel – is an essay in the ‘confined space’ suspense thriller, a genre which has boomed with the rise of mobile phones. Joe (Bryan Larkin), three days away from the end of a prison sentence, is using a contraband mobile to arrange his coming-out party and pester his ex-wife for access to their son. Smith (David Hayman), a nasty warder, shoves new fish Naz (Armin Karima) into his cell, which slightly takes the edge off Joe’s good mood.
Joe was an enforcer for a drug boss and has kept his mouth shut about the reason he mutilated a potential encroacher on the boss’ turf – but even he ought to know better than to expect gratitude. While he’s on the phone to his sister (Shauna Macdonald), he learns that his wife (Anna Russell-Martin) and son have been bundled into a van and driven off (the boy handily has a hidden phone and can give brief reports). A nasty, slightly Welsh caller tells Joe that his family will be killed unless he murders his new cellmate – a non-violent cyber-crook who turns out to be the estranged son of an expansionist gangster established thugs want to teach a lesson. Of course, carrying out the orders means Joe won’t be getting released any time soon. Like Buried, Locke and The Guilty (both versions), this depends a lot on the central performance, though other characters do show up onscreen in the cell – which is only decorated by a big picture of Al Capone.
Larkin, a hefty Scot who’s been in things like the Outpost series and a Has Fallen movie, is excellent as a big man in a small room, obviously able to take care of himself in a fight but stuck in a situation where he bruiser skills don’t give him an edge even as he is in a film noir cleft stick as fall guy. Friel sketches in all Joe’s former relationships – the ex who hates him, the driver who is his only real friend, colleagues who know the word is out and are shying away from him, and the boss who repays loyalty with callousness – with a few snatches of chat. Some of the contacts who won’t talk to Joe give more away than the ones who do. Of course, it’s contrivied – part of the pleasure of enclosed suspense is how plot traps are put together and sprung on the protagonist (and audience).
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