Worst...Direction...E ver

Start to finish, no one seemed sure what they were supposed to do. All the actors - and an excellent cast, really - were just wandering around in default mode (Rourke is the exception, and has a reputation for delivering great performances when everyone else is phoning it in [see Expendables] - clearly of the persuasion to develop his own performance absent capable direction). Dafoe confuses the audience by playing the role with his trademark "subtle nefariousness", hinting at an ominous turn later on, when the part was obviously written to resonate on a more Brian-Denneheyesque-tough-but-fair-trustworthy-kind-hearted-father-figure sort of level. Val Kilmer does a better job with this in a similar and better (yet still heavily flawed) film Felon. The camera crew was also doing some serious clock-punching, though the awful composition really falls directly on Bushemi. Every scene looks and feels like we're watching the rehearsal take where no one is really trying too hard. Any scene where people are just standing around talking seems so banal, so line for line, so script-say-I-do-this-now. People have wondered why it seems so unrealistic, so "these guys are too nice to be hardened prison guys". Its because there's no "prison history" in their performances. They look like average guys wearing jumpsuits who are oddly unphased by the fact that they woke up in a prison this morning. The pacing is atrocious. Throwaway lines are left in. Some sequences are drawn out presumably to highten tension, but it just ends up seeming like we're seeing a lot of excessive crap for no reason. And lastly, all of that (some of it) might have been fine if he had just used some music or well mixed ambience in a few places.