Displaying items by tag: Celia Aloma

CORRECTIVE MEASURES

US, 2022, 106 minutes, Colour.

Michael Rooker, Tom Cavanagh, Dan Payne, Brendan Mejia, Bruce Willis, Kevin Zegers, Celia Aloma, Haley Sales, Kat Ruston.

Directed by Sean Patrick O'Reilly.

The title suggests a film about prisons. And, it is.

However, this is a future world, a world created by graphic novels, as is this film. There are disasters all around the world (and an early news flash indicates that Australia may have disappeared!). Throughout the film there are inserts of television news flashes, continued disasters – but some comic bickering between announces, the top male announcer continually correcting his female assistant with her grammar.

At the film opens with a brutal attack by a strong hero-figure, killing a whole squad of violent killers. Then he is arrested, sentenced to a high security prison. And, it emerges that this is a government prison for men (not women) who have some kind of superpowers. If their lower leg is constricted by a brace, they are unable to exercise their power.

As the film goes on, we see a variety of superpowers, confronting behaviour amongst the prisoners, but also some sympathetic prisoners including Gordon, who has a capacity for conducting electricity, and the young prisoner, Diego, who superpower is to create an atmosphere of empathy. There is also a sympathetic large male with a distorted face. And, there is Bruce Willis, his last performance before his retirement from films, sadly, with dementia.

And, overall is the rather cynical prison warden, Michael Rooker playing it to the hilt. Kevin Segars is a brutal but somewhat done guard. Celia Aloma has ambitions to become the warden successor. There are some nice people on the staff, especially a sympathetic doctor. And there is a hyper brutal guard played by Kat Ruston.

The drama of the film consists of the warden preparing for his retirement and luxurious life after prison. His trying to deal with Bruce Willis’s character, allegedly wealthy, who superpower is rather mysterious. Several scenes of interrogation and interplay.

The climax is quite brutal as well. Somehow though Bruce Willis’s character is able to unlock some of the leg braces and so there is mayhem in the yard and throughout the prison as violent prisoners attack each other with their powers, also attacking the guards.

This seems to be a mysterious moment in the interview between the warden and Bruce Willis where, suddenly, Bruce Willis seems to have lost his power and is lying down, leaving the warden free after the mayhem escaped to his retirement.

The final twist, and audiences have to be alert to see it, just a simple look in the rear vision mirror to appreciate what has happened, an excellent twist at the end of quite a brutal film experience.