I’ve always been a sucker for John Hurt’s work so when I heard that he was in this I couldn’t wait to see how he’d do. Sadly, I only got a small supporting role. Barely an hors d'ourve and much smaller than a character actor of his caliber deserved. Especially with a juicy role as a British national incarcerated in a Turkish sanitarium. All personal disappointments aside though, as a prison flick, it holds up.
Though the ending is way too rushed, with an unnecessarily sentimental epitaph, and a few dated moments lay scattered throughout (this is hardly an Oscar-worthy soundtrack), a few high-stakes thrills and quiet but powerfully-rendered scenes of dialogue just about save what could have been just another “Papillion” (Frank Schaffner, 1973) wannabe.
Beginning in 1970 at an airport in Istanbul, American tourist and student Billy Hayes, in a tense way with local security officers, is nabbed and put before a High Court in Ankara who apparently enjoys dishing out doom to foreigners who think that they’re above the law. And from there it unfolds, early-on with a kind of alien discomfort, and later with an ominous spiral to near-insanity, chock full of sadistic guards and cutthroat prisoners all along the way.
In retrospect, it’s perfectly understandable to see why at least a good handful of critics turned up the burner under Oliver Stone’s ass for his portrayal of the Turks in such a bitter light. Leave it to the master of spin to twist the book’s original narrative (whose author, the real-life Billy Hayes, completely disavowed the adaptation) into something a little….less than accurate. I’m not quite sure if this helped to perpetuate those stories about jailhouse rape but this definitely didn’t put a lid on them. A number of scenes are apparently completely fabricated.
But that’s not to say that what Stone gives us is a complete waste of time. What unfolds is much darker tale of loneliness and isolation and there’s a deeper sense of trauma and yearning because of what liberties the controversial scripter ultimately made. And all implications of racial demonizing aside, while you start to root for Hayes to make good his escape, however arduous or filthy he might get in the process, I found it hard to ultimately shake the feeling that somehow, he brought it all on himself.
Best Use: A.) If you like escapists. B.) You enjoy the flavor of local non-actors. C.) Pro-American extradition gives you a hard-on.
No comments:
Post a Comment