Cell 211

Description

Winner of 8 Goya Awards (Spain&39;s Oscars) including Best Film, Actor, Director and Screenwriter, this politically taut and fast-paced prison thriller is the most internationally acclaimed Spanish film of the past year. On his first day on the job, prison officer Juan Olivier (Alberto Ammann) is knocked unconscious in a freak accident and his co-workers carry him to an empty cell. When he awakens, Juan discovers that he has been abandoned in the middle of a riot in a high security cellblock home to the prison s most dangerous criminals. If they discover he's a guard, he s dead meat. To survive, Juan must pose as a prisoner and conspire with the riot's vicious leader, Malamadre (Luis Tosar, The Limits of Control ). As the violence escalates and political fallout mounts, Juan uses all his cunning to stay alive. Special Features Include: -New transfer, enhanced for widescreen viewing -Optional English and Spanish subtitles -Making-of documentary (28 mins) -Original theatrical trailer A powerful prison melodrama, Daniel Monzón's Cell 211 was a real jailhouse riot at the 2010 Goya Awards, Spain's version of the Oscars: the picture took eight prizes, including Best Film, Director, and Actor (for Luis Tosar). This will not surprise fans of the movie, which rockets along with a brilliant opening premise and a muscular, violent approach to the genre. That premise puts a new prison guard, Juan (Alberto Ammann), on a tour of the facility the day before he actually begins his job. At that very moment, the prisoners stage a takeover, and Juan is caught inside--but hmm, they've never seen him before and don't know he's actually a guard. What if he tried to brazen it out and pretend to be a newbie prisoner himself? This dangerous masquerade creates automatic suspense, and the film has the refreshing virtue of having Juan act intelligently about his survival, instead of the usual backing-into-a-story-because-someone-does-something-stupid. The movie is truly powered by the instigator of the uprising, the fearsome Malamadre, played in a furious turn by Tosar ( Mondays in the Sun , Miami Vice ). The early plotting, and the cat-and-mouse stuff involving Juan and Malamadre, is strong enough to keep the movie going through a few questionable developments in the second half. The thing stirs up a hornet's nest--always a potent movie formula when contained within the walls of a prison. --Robert Horton