Starred Up

A new British star is born in this brutal but rewarding drama, with Jack O'Connell as a violent young offender transferred to an adult prison. There he must defend himself not just from other inmates but overzealous and corrupt wardens, too. Presented as a harrowing immersive experience, the film starts with O'Connell's Eric being inducted into jail, a dehumanising and humiliating process that is only a curtain-raiser to the everyday hell that is life on the wing. Scorning the best efforts of well-meaning volunteer counsellor Oliver (Rupert Friend), Eric stubbornly resists any attempt to rehabilitate him. However, a glimmer of hope appears in the unlikely form of Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), an older con with a fatherly air. That's because Neville is Eric's father - but will his form of tough love be Eric's salvation? It's a question this moving but unsentimental film pursues to its stunning climax, and though the depiction of prison justice sometimes recalls an overcooked version of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, O'Connell commands the screen as the troubled yet somehow sympathetic antihero.