The upcoming prison film from director Damien Chazelle sounds curiously like an old Sylvester Stallone slammer drama if a synopsis is anything to go by. Everything that is old is new again. As we heard yesterday (the 18th March), Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s next film has begun filming in Greece, with an old Athens tobacco ... Damien Chazelle’s prison film sounds like a remake of Stallone’s Lock Up
The upcoming prison film from director Damien Chazelle sounds curiously like an old Sylvester Stallone slammer drama if a synopsis is anything to go by.
Everything that is old is new again. As we heard yesterday (the 18th March), Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s next film has begun filming in Greece, with an old Athens tobacco factory being turned into prison set for the production.
Among the stars reported on so far we’ll find Daniel Craig, Cillian Murphy and Michelle Williams.
Until now, little was known about the project other than that prison setting, with even the title currently being kept away from the press. But the good folks at World of Reel have since dug up a brief synopsis, which hints at a tense battle of wits behind bars:
A prison warden (Craig) attempts to discipline a defiant inmate (Murphy) within a brutal correctional system. As tensions rise, their relationship evolves into a psychological duel. Williams portrays the warden’s wife. Mia Threapleton plays the inmate’s girlfriend.
It sounds intriguing – perhaps like the drummer-teacher relationship from Whiplash taken to a darker extreme. It all sounds weirdly familiar – not unlike the old Sylvester Stallone drama, Lock Up, in fact.
Released in 1989, Lock Up saw Stallone play Frank Leone, a mechanic shoved in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. After a plot turn or two, he ends up in an absolute hellhole of a slammer run by the sadistic Warden Drumgoole, memorably played by Donald Sutherland.
Drumgoole immediately takes exception to Frank, and sets about making the inmate’s life a misery. Much violence ensues, and threatens to spill outside the prison’s confines and harm Frank’s love interest, Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel).
It was one of many films that saw the Italian Stallion thrown in jail. He was incarcerated in one form or another in three Rambo flicks, Escape To Victory, Over The Top, Tango & Cash, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, and perhaps his uber prison film, Escape Plan, where he served time with his old rival, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Escape Plan's two sequels also included varying helpings of Stallone depending on what their budgets could afford.
Directed by John (Rolling Thunder) Flynn,Lock Up wasn’t remotely a hit for Stallone, but then it wasn’t the biggest disaster of his long career, either. Has Chazelle taken inspiration from this 80s chapter in Sly’s filmography? It’s possibly to imagine Daniel Craig being all glowering and sinister like Sutherland’s Drumgoole. Could the film even be a surprise remake of Lock Up?
Probably not, in truth, but the parallels are quite interesting all the same. Aren’t they? No? Just me?
Er, more news on Chazelle’s mystery chokey drama (Lock Up: Port Of Call Athens, anyone?) as we get it!
