Lock Up

Sly Stallone hit gold with this seriously under rated film. This is surely Stallone's best films with Cliffhanger and Demolitian Man following.

There are superb performances from the main man and his supporting characters like Donald Sutherland(the assignment), Tom Sizemore(enemy of the state), John Amos, Sonny Landham(predator) and Danny Trejo(desperado).

The story is gritty and involving, and the best scene is Sizemore's last bid for Stallone's friendship. Watch it and you'll know what I mean.

This a great film. Do not miss it. Rating=4/5

The mechanic Frank Leone (Sylvester Stallone) is a model inmate in a low security prison and has only six months to serve. He intends to spend the rest of his life working in his garage and with his beloved girlfriend Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel). Out of the blue, Leone is brutally transferred during the night to the maximum security Gateway Prison without any explanation. Soon he learns that Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) is the responsible for his transference.

Leone had been sentenced to Treadmore Prison after beating the punks that hit his mentor and friend that taught him his profession of auto mechanic. When his mentor was dying, he asked permission to Drumgoole to go to visit his friend but the request was denied. Leone fled from Treadmore and his lawyer went to the press to expose Drumgoole's behavior. The result was Leone in a minimum security prison and Drumgoole sent to Gateway. Now the warden is seeking revenge and will do anything to keep Leone behind bars.

"Lock up" is an entertaining prison drama full of action with Sylvester Stallone after the successful Rambo trilogy. The story is flawed and shallow, and the viewer shall not think how a prisoner is transferred the way Frank Leone is and his lawyer simply does not exist in the story. The characters are not well developed and there is no explanation for the sadistic behavior of the prison guards. However this type of movie is not to think and entertains. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Condenação Brutal" ("Brutal Conviction")

Lock Up is a pretty good movie for Stallone fans, although it could easily have been much better had he not been basically a saint behind bars. Stallone plays Frank Leone, who faces multiple prison terms total, beginning with an 18-month sentence he was given for avenging the vicious beating of an old man who took him off the streets when he was a teenager. So back then he wasn't allowed to leave the prison to see his dying father (when we meet him, he is on a weekend leave from a minimum security prison, a weekend that he spends playing ball with his kids while his charming wife looks on approvingly), so he breaks out to go to the funeral.

So his minor prison sentence turns into a big one, although one that he spends at a comfortable minimum security joint with all kinds of perks, including weekends and conjugals and even friendships with the guards. His release is approaching when suddenly he is awakened in the middle of the night and taken to a brutal, maximum-security prison where he is to spend the rest of his sentence. It's called a "routine transfer," although he has done nothing to deserve such an upgrade in security status and even his wife is not informed of what happened to him.

Ultimately he learns that he is being transferred to the prison of Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland at his creepy best), who was in charge of the prison that Leone escaped from, which in turn made it into the papers and ruined Drumgoole's career. Now he has his chance for revenge, and he plans to arrange for Leone to spend the rest of his life in this prison.

The movie carelessly glosses over the ease with which Drumgoole plucks Leone out of his own prison with no explanation to those in charge there, and the conflict immediately switches to Leone trying to survive in this violent prison and stay out of trouble so he doesn't screw up his chances of getting released on time so he can go back to his family.

Drumgoole pulls out all the stops in violating the law that his institution is designed to uphold so that he can keep this one guy down, and Leone faces all manner of challenges ranging from shank-laden inmates to one of his inmate buddies who steals the Mustang they've all restored together and tears all over the prison yard doing doughnuts.

The movie is definitely entertaining although there are times when the cheese factor is through the roof, such as the spray paint fight and the downright school-girlish friendship that Leone forms with a small group of other inmates. On the other hand, it also has a much wider target audience than your average prison movie, and it manages to generally avoid most of the gaping pitfalls that prison movies are in danger of falling into when they shoot for a wide audience. There's nothing realistic about it, but for good Stallone entertainment, this is not a bad way to follow up the massive success of the Rambo and Rocky films.

Also keep your eye out for a young Tom Sizemore, but be advised that the movie features violence, unnecessary cheesiness and may leave you with an overwhelming desire to go out and get some doughnuts

Great… just look at the cast who director John Flynn gets us locked up with. Sylvester Stallone plays the ideal prisoner - a rock, Tom Sizemore an edgy inmate, Larry Romano the naïve kid, Frank McRae the friendly man mountain, Sonny Landham dominates with a snake-like turn, John Amos a hardened prison officer captain and finally Donald Sutherland looking down on them as the menacing prison warden using his inmates like chess pieces "That's no game man. It's a lesson". You'll love to hate him, as Sutherland is picture-perfect in his delivery. The cast are outstanding, as the performances of all simply engage. Also making the cut is Darlanne Fluegal, William Allen Young, Jordan Lund and Danny Trejo makes a brief appearance here or there. The story follows that of Frank Leone having only 6 months of his sentence to serve, but then one night he's whisked away and he finds himself in a high security penitentiary with a warden Drumgoole (who he shares a past with) that tends to break his spirit within that time by using brutality, intimidation and humiliation. However despite Drumgoole's grudge to see Leone's spirit smothered, he'll find out it won't come too easy. Habitual structure, but quite a tense, grim and barbaric prison-yard story with director Flynn's durably taut handling rising above the predictability. It does seem to move from one sadistic act to another (as the warden tries about anything to break his man), but the plot installs some genuine companionship's between the characters and provides a mind-set of how these inmates truly get through the days so to keep from sinking in to insanity. Unpleasant, but also affecting. Bill Conti strings together an effective music score.

"You won't break me."

This is a definite must for anyone following Stallone's movies! It is great in its storyline, its atmosphere, its characters and its ending! If you let it, it'll really grip you and hold you in tight suspense till the very end of the drama. I'd say this is one of the most underrated movies ever. If someone knows why, please write me a note.