CONVICT is a low budget Australian prison film that sees a former soldier sent to a brutal prison where he must survive the machinations of the corrupt warden and a pair of sadistic guards. It's very much par for the course for a prison movie, with all of the shanks, male rape, bathroom beatings and unpleasant torture you'd expect to see, but at the same time it acquits itself well with the material.
The film's lead is played by the unknown-to-me George Basha as a tough but ordinary everyman who soon finds himself adapting to a violent world. The set-up and situations in which he finds himself are very predictable but I've always been a fan of the prison film as a whole so I really enjoyed this. The performances from the unknown cast are strong, particularly the bad guys, and the narrative keeps you guessing as to what's going to unfold next. Mostly though it's that sense of unease, of barely suppressed violence that had me intrigued. Not a great film then, but a solid one in any case.
