Jailbreakers

Movie was awful, script was weak & main characters need some brush up to save this film. The plot was too far fetched & not believeable. As an example, Tony steals a car from a person's driveway directly across from Shannon's house. The next scene, Tony is picking up Shannon with the stolen car ... did anyone report the car stolen or did Tony think no one would notice a showroom 1957 convertible?

This kind of reminds me of the Masters of Horror series, the series of short films made for Showtime in the early 2000s, hyping up the talents of filmmakers like John Carpenter and Joe Dante which ended up being largely just an uneven series of random horror-like stories without any real authorial stamps from the talents involved. I guess Showtime's been doing this for a while because Jailbreakers is part of a series called Rebel Highway, and this kind of just feels like a generic 50s biker film homage with Friedkin behind the camera. I mean, this isn't terrible or anything, but it feels like a quick afterthought of a script out of a bunch.

In the 1950s, Tony Falcon (Antonio Sabato Jr.) is a ne'er-do-well out of high school greaser with some friends still going to school, most notably Skinny (Adrien Brody). One day while meeting them outside the building, they watch the school's cheerleaders practice, and Tony leers over Angel Norton (Shannen Doherty) who gets a thrill out of the attention and likes being the object of affection for such a bad boy. They start a relationship. He's increasingly violent to other people. She's excited by the whole thing. He robs a burger joint, and they get arrested, her getting off of any charges and him going straight to prison.

I mean...this is really generic stuff. I guess the only thing that really separates it from the stuff actually being made in the 1950s is the preponderance of foul language and the implied oral sex that Tony gives to Angel as she drives the car which seems...difficult? Kids are so cray-cray, you know? It's all presented in Friedkin's clear-eyed visual style with an emphasis on performance, and this is one of those films where you see the limits of how far performance can take a film. Everyone here is good, from Doherty at the center of everything to Sabato playing up the tough-guy image to Adrienne Barbeau as Angel's mother all worried and trying to restart her family's life after the disruption of Angel's arrest to Brody who feels like he probably should have been the protagonist of the whole thing by the end. However, the story is so...unremarkable without any of real substance to say. Is it about how the 1950s were intolerant of criminal behavior and used social shunning? Terrible, I know.

That shunning manifests in Angel losing her part in the school production of Romeo and Juliet to her father losing clients to her mother being snubbed at parties, so they completely move to a new city while Tony remains in jail, pining for the girl who won't write to him. She, in the meantime, gets close to Jack (Chris Conrad), a jock, while still harboring feelings for Tony in prison to the point where she writes to him finally, setting off the series of events that leads to the eponymous jailbreak and a speedy chase towards the Mexican border. Three groups end up chasing them, Angel's parents, the police, and...Skinny leading Angel's former little gang of biker greasers.

Skinny taking part feels so random, but the ending revolves around him being the good guy in a bad situation. This also follows up from him helping Tony steal a horse and sell it as their own between the jailbreak and getting Angel. The whole Skinny thing is probably where the film could have been interesting and where most of the confusion thematically and narratively lies. It's not that it's confusing about what's happening, but confusion on the part of the film about what the film is actually trying to be about at its core. Really, this is a first draft.

So...it's fine. It's far from good, but the generic parts are handled well enough while the acting is all actually pretty good. It's just that where it could have been interesting, it's not, and where it's generic, it's nothing particularly special.

Really, this feels like Friedkin just cashing a quick paycheck between projects.

The plot of this film adaptation is similar to other films from "Rebel Highway" list and does not differ in any originality. There is a cheerleader in the person of Shannen Doherty - a girl with a changeable mood, who in a couple of seconds falls in love with an ambiguous element riding a bike. As usual, they then get into various troubles together, as a result of which the latter quickly goes to prison, but, however, not for long. Bored, as they sang in the song of Yegor Letov, from the unbearable ease of being, the heroine gradually forgets about her casual romance and switches to another guy who does not stand out for his extreme behavior. The idyll does not last long - the biker escapes from prison with a firm intention to return his favorite passion, along the way throwing one of his colleagues on a high-budget deal. After meeting the aforementioned, they head off to Mexico together in a newly purchased Chevrolet convertible, further complicating their situation along the way, as a result of which both heroes will regret more than once that they got involved with each other. The police, the girl's parents, and former friends from a small gang set off in pursuit of them. The outcome of their wanderings becomes quite predictable.

It turned out to be difficult to establish for sure what acted as the ideological inspirer from this position, but I dare to assume that this film was "The Delinquents" of 1957.

Quite simply, this movie fails on all levels. I got the feeling that about every 2nd scene was cut out of this movie...that's how jarring it could be. I can't imagine how incoherent (or idiotic) this movie would appear to someone who sees it "edited for TV". The acting is weak, particularly by the supporting cast, and the script isn't terribly interesting either.

Don't waste your time with this mess.

I found this episode to be extremely well executed, which is expected since William Friedkin is at the helm. I saw it a while ago on television and i hated it, but now just watched it again on netflix and it's a well made little Friedkin film such as many of other episodes he's done for television (Twilight Zone, Tales from the Cript, and CSI). The film was well photographed, edited, acted and directed. It does carry his theme of the thin line between good and evil.

I would say it's a great teenage film. I can't believe Adrian Brodi was in this film as a teenager who went on to have a great career in films and winning an Oscar. Shannen Doherty...well I'm not sure what happened to her. William Friedkin went on to make some decent films (Rules of Engagement, The Hunted, Bug, Killer Joe), but Jade, well that's a different story.