IMDb plot summary: When an inmate is granted one weekend out of prison to see her dying mother, a rookie correction officer struggles to keep her under control.
Directed by Laurie Collyer. Starring Melissa Leo, Tessa Thompson, and Edgar Ramirez.
Furlough stars Tessa Thompson as a prison guard who is tasked with escorting prisoner Melissa Leo to visit her dying mother. Thompson is young and eager for a promotion and determined to take this assignment very seriously. Leo is excited to be out in the world after so long, and we're never sure if she's going to try to make things difficult for Thompson or if she's just enjoying the time she has out. These are two good actresses turning into two good performances in a film that is occasionally a little obviously scripted -- and by that I mean that we can see the strings working. The ending in particular, the climactic moment of the story, is a little too easy and a little too sweet to come out of the story that came before it. Thompson and Leo both make this believable on the whole and let us root for both of them at alternate moments. Interestingly, this is almost entirely a story about relationships rather than any kind of comment on the prison industrial system, aside from a very brief comment from Thompson's sister at the beginning asking her how she can be part of the system like this. It's a little awkward that that's brought up and then never really addressed again, but this isn't really a prison movie, it's a buddy movie. And while it's not amazing it mostly does what it's trying to do.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Furlough > The Keep
Furlough < Till Death
Furlough < Timecop
Furlough > Blood Diamond
Furlough > The Fly (1986)
Furlough > 12 Years a Slave
Furlough > A Doll's House (1973)
Furlough > Platoon
Furlough > The Nice Guys
Furlough < The River Wild
Furlough > Lifeforce
Final spot: #1336 out of 3552, or 62%.
No comments:
Post a Comment