LOCK UP

title: LOCK UP
year: 1989
cast: Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, Tom Sizemore
rating: ***

Somewhere within all the corny, bombastic fare lies a cool little prison flick starring Sylvester Stallone as a furloughed convict with six months to go – suddenly thrust from a nice location to a really nasty one thanks to villainous warden Donald Sutherland, seeming out of an overboard science-fiction film. Sutherland’s cartoonish tyrant aside (with a personal vendetta against our hero); it’s Sly, with a Bill Conti score backing him, turning in his usual tough dude with a good soul character. And with the aid of fellow prisoners Tom Sizemore as a talkative exposition machine, and friendly Frank McCrae as the head of the jailhouse auto garage, he has some fun – befriending a naive and predictably doomed young convict while battling the big Indian from PREDATOR and 48 HRS: Sonny Landham as the joint’s formidable ruffian. But all sinks to Sutherland’s hammy performance – though perhaps the writer’s partially to blame for comic-book dialog like: “This is Hell – and I’m going to give you the guided tour.” Yet even the dumb stuff… as Stallone goes through endless mental and physical torture to eventually confront his enemy… is brutally fun to watch.