I saw this alleged B-level movie on a sleepless night. Although these conditions hardly qualify to say that a movie caught your attention because it was so good, I must admit I found it very intriguing, not because of its quality, but because of half its quality. I'll explain.
The strange thing about this movie is that it appears to be made in two stages, clearly distinct in cinematography, script and acting. I'm not saying it was, but it would explain why these two parts are so different.
In the "background part", the mechanics of the Justice For Victims movement are displayed, with victims and relatives lamenting the abstracted judicial system which is too lenient on perpetrators and does not care about the victims' justice. The movement's chief sets up an alternative circuit, where perpetrators are killed or "sentenced to death" so to speak, paying the killers with money financed by the victims, while some of it sticks to the hands of the movement's chief and the corrupt prison manager. This whole idea of restoring the old "eye for an eye" has been crafted very well, with sublime acting by the victims in an almost documentary fashion, and the intense characterization of the chief, whose motives are revenge, money, power and some true sense of justice altogether. It installs a double bind with the viewer, who sympathizes with the victims but struggles with the morals of revenge outside law.
The "foreground part" however, starring Rob Lowe, is your way below average stupid "escape, run and get shot at" B-movie, with only a handful of villain guards and a mole inmate running and shooting about, complete with a romantic happy end, pulling the movie away from reality entirely.
I could not help but feel that this movie was initially based on a sublime script, when half way some box office oriented but lame producer entered the scene, replaced the story writers with cheap off-shore scenarists and added a bunch of stars to turn it into an easy going action movie. It must have gone like that. How else to explain the discrepancy between the two parts?
