Cell 211 is an extremely tense and uncomfortably violent film. Opening with a distressingly visceral wrist slitting with a shiv in the dank and miserable titular prison cell, writer-director Daniel Monzón here brings together a twisting and dangerous film that makes for compelling, if occasionally overwrought, viewing. A winner of eight Goya Awards in its native Spain, the movie is based a simple yet endlessly surprising plot device, and makes extremely good use of its limits in budget and scale to construct a dark and frightening study of how far a man is willing to go to survive extraordinary circumstances, and how far those circumstances will wrench him from the man he is.
The story centres around newly employed prison guard Juan Oliver (Alberto Ammann), whose aw-shucks-everyman qualities don’t seem to be particularly suited for his new gig in a high security prison. Taking the job to help support his heavily pregnant wife Elena (Marta Etura), Juan decides to make a good impression and tour the big house the day before he’s supposed to start. One ill-timed prison riot and a nasty bump to the head later, and Juan awakens to find himself slap bang in the middle of the inmates’ insurgency, and makes the split-second decision to pretend to be a prisoner who’s just as convicted in rabblerousing in order to hide his true identity and save his life.
Trouble comes in the shape of prison-boss Malamadre, a brilliantly unhinged Luis Tosar, who grows to admire the shrewd new prisoner, as well as question where Juan’s true motives lie, and an escalating power struggle between the prison forces, desperate relatives rioting outside, and fellow prisoners looking to rise up the pecking order. These inmates feel real and look every bit the rough and ready cons they’re portrayed as, and speak with a growling and guttural beat that sounds authentic and only goes to highlight Ammann’s Christ-like appearance. But he’s crafty and quick-witted, and the topsy-turvy nature of his alliances makes for engaging cinema.
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| The guy in the red was just happy to get out of the house |
In many ways the best thing about the film is the brilliant simplicity of its plot, and the premise is explored to extreme measures. Monzón’s script lays out the first half in a frighteningly believable series of events leading to Juan’s accidental incarceration and cat-and-mouse deception. The desperation of his predicament is balanced out by scenes of perfect domestic bliss with Elena, as well as increasingly frantic interplay between the security staff and negotiators trying to get him out, and swat teams and government gofers fearing a national crisis when ETA prisoners get involved.
It’s a shame then that everything goes a bit too melodramatic with an 11th hour twist that’s coupled with some unrestrained direction, making the brilliance of the opening descend into something akin to a better than average episode of Prison Break. The acting remains excellent, with Tosar aggressively showboating as the indiscriminate power-player and Ammann quietly cunning and driven to the edge, but the ending feels criminally rushed, an annoyingly neat cop out that avoids all the disparate characters having to deal with the resolution of their actions.
A fantastic premise in a brutally violent thriller.
4 Likes.
Limited Release: July 15th
Runtime: 113 Mins.
Certificate: 18
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