How much can a man take?, how far can he be pushed before he fights back? This is the premise of Lock Up: a jailhouse battle of wills movie that attempts to portray the harsh realities of the justice system, with enough blood and machoism to feed your blood thirst.
Lock Up is perhaps a brutal version of Rocky: set in the very real Rahway Prison, East Jersey, Stallone plays the emotional nice guy Frank Leone who only wants to do the time for escaping his previous sentence to see his dying step dad. Unfortunately, the warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) has other ideas: dragging Leone from his cell in the middle of night and transferring him to his maximum security prison, where he proceeds to beat him senseless via his corrupt dealings with the bad boy inmates.
With little interest at the time of its release, Lock Up was lost somewhere between Rambo III and Rocky V. Even hardcore Stallone fans rarely give the movie the light of day these days, even though it ranks considerably higher than turkeys such as Judge Dredd, or D-Tox.
Lock Up is hardly impressive, but is perhaps Stallone's most liberal movie, and a test of his character's spirit. Of course, with it being Sly, the audience is always aware that he will prevail, but a sadistic fascination with brutality and an admiration for Stallone's own humaneness is what keeps us rooting for the character throughout.
Other notable features of the movie include Bill Conti's brilliant score; the car shop montage; and the supporting cast made up of a young (and thin) Tom Sizemore, John Amos (Lisa's dad in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air), and Sonny Landham as Chink Weber (Billy from Predator). Worth a watch.
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Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
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Feb 10th, 2009
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