THE FIRST DAY at a new job can be so awkward. You don’t know how to work your swivelly chair, and you have to eat lunch by yourself in the parking lot, and you can’t find the bathroom but you feel weird asking because it seems too soon to bring up the excretory system seeing as you just met these people, and then during your tour of the facilities you get hit with a homemade projectile whittled by a madman, so your boss has you lie down in an empty room to recuperate, but just then a deadly prison riot takes over the entire building and your boss runs off and leaves you for dead, so you have to impersonate a bloodthirsty murderer just to avoid getting shivved in the eyeball by a gang of violent but morally ambiguous Spaniards.
The above is what happens to Juan Oliver—a prison guard on his first day of work—in Cell 211, a Spanish thriller so stressful it just might compress your brain into a diamond (most likely fatal. But hey! Free diamond!). Stuck in the titular concrete hole at exactly the worst possible moment in hole history, Juan has to think fast—stripping himself of all civilian accoutrements, affecting a felonious scowl, and becoming BFFs with the riot’s mastermind.
I’m going to go out on an entirely subjective limb here and say that incarceration is literally the most interesting thing that humans do. And Cell 211 tells a terrific prison story. As Juan, determined to get out alive, adapts to his new environs, his sympathies (and ours) shift in startling but wholly believable ways. The further the film unravels and the worse things get for Juan, the more the real villains of this monster movie make themselves known. They are, of course, the ones on the outside—the guards, the wardens, the government, whose crimes are doubly insidious because they masquerade as justice. It’s a pretty heavy-handed point, and less nuanced than it needs to be, so if you must walk out of Cell 211 with a message, make it this: Sucks to be Juan. WORST FIRST DAY OF WORK EVER.
Yeah, it’s painfully apparent that the reason you like this turd of movie has nothing to do with the tension or stress; you like this movie because it portrays the “real monsters” as the guards, warden, and system. I have a news flash for you; correctional officers and the police are hard working, decent people. It is not the officer’s, nor the systems, fault when some sick fuck rapes a child. Or when some asshole shoots a clerk so he or she can get some drug money. It is not the systems fault when some shit does a drive-by, and so on. The fact is, you cop hating pusillanimous shits couldn’t handle what an officer sees and deals with. If any one of you shits, and I include your obnoxious readers and target readers here, spent a week in the shoes of an peace officer, you would wind up sitting in a corner sucking your soft fucking thumb. You cowards.
I work in law enforcement (parole officer), and I read this paper. I also don’t take anything their film reviewers write seriously, because they are all 22 yo interns trying to say something cute enough to get them laid at some bar on NW 23rd…take it with a grain of salt….it’s just a movie reivew, pal.
@pdxparole: HA! Little do you know, hipsters fled NW23 years ago. They’re all in Sellwood now.
who said anything about hipsters? I’m a motherfucking hipster, you motherfucker. And by hipster I mean I look good in clothes and have sex. The incessant whining about PDX “hipsters” has long since smacked of jealousy and resentment. Tight pants and tattoos get a man laid, brutha. Handcuffs don’t hurt, either.
@pdxparole: I think you’re protesting too much. Maybe if you stopped making your parolees trade sexual favors in exchange for leniency on their failed drug tests you’d discover that your sex life isn’t really anything you’d want to admit in a court of law.
derves, just about every prison film ever made, going back to Brute Force, portrays prison guards and wardens as corrupt and excessively violent. I wouldn’t take it personally. The narrative irony that law enforcement is as criminal, or more criminal, than the actual criminals is irresistible to screenplay writers. As Lindy points out, this irony is exacerbated by the fact that their criminality is clothed in righteousness, doubling appealing to writers. Lastly, its the path of least resistance from the audiences perspective: the audience will identify and even sympathize with the narrative’s dominant voice. Its why we watch the Godfather and the Sopranos and end up routing for the Michael Corleone and Tony, rather than considering them murderous sociopaths, like we should.
You have surprisingly thin skin for someone who, I assume, has worked in corrections.
Just like to say, I approve of your perspective, pdxparole.
@derves, fuck you and fuck the police. You bitch-made sissies cry an awful lot for how tough you portray yourself to be and how hard your job supposedly is.
At least you get to leave the fucking prison for 16 hours a day. Try living there for 15 to 20 years.
P.S. Here’s a little unsolicited advice…Stop shooting black people and retarded people, people generally tend to think you are an ignorant piece of shit when you do.
If all cops are decent, hard working, upstanding individuals, they wouldn’t be killing unarmed and/or mentally disabled people all the damn time.
Also, if you haven’t yet, check out the Stanford Prison Experiment.
They took some Standford students, and tried to have them do some role playing for 2 weeks… they couldn’t last that long “In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.”
Fairly decent evidence that if you’re a prison warden, you’re probably also a sadistic prick. Not a big leap to cops from there.
http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/1
I thought the handcuffs were *supposed* to hurt…? At least a little?