Stallone had completed four years of bad movies before this, and would - odd fun ones like Demolition Man aside - complete seven years of bad movies after it. That's an impressive hit rate of inanity by anyone's standards.
It's not that Lock Up is even particularly any good, though the borderline realistic (for a Stallone movie) brutality gives it a verve others around it perhaps lack. Added to this is a psychological edge, as Stallone's Frank Leone is manipulated and tortured throughout under the watchful eye of Donald Sutherland's sadistic warden. It's kind of like a version of the 60s TV show The Prisoner, only with No.6 a gurning muscleman and No.2 a man who wants to see eight guards beat him half to death with batons. Continually. For ninety minutes.
Rooting for the wronged Leone is what propels the film, into its (even more) ludicrous climax and descent into incongruous action movie lines ("rape this!", said in earnest, is the oddest exchange). Other oddities include the overt inverse racism whereby the only two guards to show mercy are the two black guards, and also Sutherland's performance. As the very first Donald Sutherland film I saw, I spent several years avoiding him, believing him to be a truly terrible actor. It's only in retrospect, when his talent is abundantly clear, that you can appreciate that this is Sutherland filling the "bad Brit" role so beloved of Stallone's slice of Hollywood and sending it up to the max.
I've made this film sound a guilty pleasure, and it kind of IS, yet there's also a compelling story at its heart, one man against the improbable odds. And his even more improbable victory.
It's not that Lock Up is even particularly any good, though the borderline realistic (for a Stallone movie) brutality gives it a verve others around it perhaps lack. Added to this is a psychological edge, as Stallone's Frank Leone is manipulated and tortured throughout under the watchful eye of Donald Sutherland's sadistic warden. It's kind of like a version of the 60s TV show The Prisoner, only with No.6 a gurning muscleman and No.2 a man who wants to see eight guards beat him half to death with batons. Continually. For ninety minutes.
Rooting for the wronged Leone is what propels the film, into its (even more) ludicrous climax and descent into incongruous action movie lines ("rape this!", said in earnest, is the oddest exchange). Other oddities include the overt inverse racism whereby the only two guards to show mercy are the two black guards, and also Sutherland's performance. As the very first Donald Sutherland film I saw, I spent several years avoiding him, believing him to be a truly terrible actor. It's only in retrospect, when his talent is abundantly clear, that you can appreciate that this is Sutherland filling the "bad Brit" role so beloved of Stallone's slice of Hollywood and sending it up to the max.
I've made this film sound a guilty pleasure, and it kind of IS, yet there's also a compelling story at its heart, one man against the improbable odds. And his even more improbable victory.