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IMPRISONED
Director: Paul Kampf Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Juan Pablo Raba, Juana Acosta, Esai Morales, Jon Huertas, Edward James Olmos, John Heard MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:44 Release Date: 9/13/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2019 It seems unfair to say that Imprisoned is passionate about the wrong thing, but the weight of writer/director Paul Kampf's purpose for this tale certainly seems to be placed on the wrong thing. Here, we get a melodrama about a man wrongly convicted of a crime and a plea against capital punishment. The latter, though, comes across as either an afterthought or a point that only matters in relation to the plot. The real meat of the story is all of its twists and turns. The whole tale is told in flashback, as retired warden Daniel Calvin (Laurence Fishburne) wanders the soon-to-be demolished prison he ran 20 years prior. Back then, he meets Maria (Juana Acosta), who runs a café and protests the death penalty in her spare time. She's married to Dylan (Juan Pablo Raba), an ex-convict who's now a fisherman. Daniel, as it turns out, is very familiar with this man. To cut to the chase, Dylan accidentally shot and killed Daniel's pregnant wife during a robbery. He served his time, but Daniel doesn't think it was enough. He wants to see Dylan punished and sets out on an elaborate scheme to get the man back in prison and, ideally for him, heading to the gallows. Daniel is, not to put too fine a point on it, a cold-blooded S.O.B., who abuses his power and seems to get a perverse joy in executions. This is even before the plot against Dylan is set in motion, when he stalks the couple, gets a family member involved in framing the man, and essentially rapes Maria in an attempt to get under Dylan's skin. Once Dylan's in prison again, the plot becomes a race against the clock. Maria lobbies the governor (played by Esai Morales) to halt executions, and Daniel repeatedly tries to break Dylan's spirits, while also covering up his own misdeeds. As melodrama, the movie is overblown, although the performances (Fishburne as a nasty villain, Raba as a passive martyr, and Acosta as the determined wife) keep the material as grounded as it could be. The real sticking point of Imprisoned, though, is how little it actually cares about capital punishment as anything more than a plot device. When the climax of this story treats a series of executions as a way of generating suspense, there's really no other conclusion to draw. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
violence, disturbing images, some sexuality and language)
