Stir

1980, Australia, directed by Stephen Wallace

Bryan Brown was a busy man around 1980, moving from smaller parts to the big time with Breaker Morant and this very fine prison film, based on an actual prison riot that took place in Australia in the 1970s. Like Short Eyes a few years earlier, the film is written by an ex-con and it's very good on some of the small details of prison life, particularly, in this case, the fine gradations of power not just between prisoners and guards but within each of those groups; also like the American film, there's a bluntness about sex, particularly in the prison context, that's refreshing by more recent standards. Brown sometimes comes across as a rather lazy performer, coasting on his charm rather than pushing himself, but here he's fully committed in a role that's by turns magnetic and unsympathetic.