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.
