The System

Jeremy Piven was unrecognizable. Wow. Terance Howard popped up. Again, wow. Standard script. Watching these former A-listers bring the whole movie up a star was fun. Gibson is not a leading man. He mumbles and poses his way through. Just not a very good movie. Found myself checking email and surfing while it was droning on. The fact an inmate carries a cell phone around for an hour was not beyond me. The fact all the bad guys were white and all the heroes were black was not missed. Just a paint by numbers, straight to DVD and streaming movie about a former soldier who gets into trouble and has to go underground. Meh.

I decided to watch this movie because of the appearance of the excellent actor Terrence Howard. He does act well (again), but the rest of this movie is a stinker...

The bad: this story does not make sense. It's gibbledigook nonsensical. And mind you, this story is meant to be taken seriously, but it ends up being a laughing stock.

More bad; 2 actors are performing well, but the rest of the cast is hopelessly below average. This movie is rushed or at least void of any talent in writing and directing.

Not even the action is worth the watch. I am a fan of action B-movies, but this movie is just completely lacking in any sort of exciting action as well. What a dud!

Who is kidnapper holding Gibson's and Howard's family members hostage??? It's the only reason I can afford for them being tied to this piece of trash. Really bad acting, writing, cinematography, sets, etc...etc... The eighties A-Team or Hardcastle and McCormack had better production value and scripts!!! The prison laundry scene looked like a laundromat. The prison yard looked like a high school gym area with temp fencing. Low budget doesn't begin to describe this terrible film... A more appropriate title would be 80 minutes of Tyrese Making Stinkface... I want my 80 minutes back with interest!

That's all I wan' know. Dallas Jackson, what did you smoke before making this? 'cos I swear today to stay far away from it.... Gibson must be cursing himself for being a part of this... 20 minutes of the movie and I felt like I was watching some amateur 80s' chinese stuff.... The actors have done their best but the way it is directed and the cinematography.... Both deserve an Oscar for "God knows what it was". I personally feel that the young film makers must watch this again and again so they'd know what not to do. Also the script seems like stolen from hundreds of average films from the past 2 decades.

Sometimes just sad, but usually mean and you never see him smiling.

Sadly, this movie deserves the 3.5 rating it currently has. I gave it a 4 as I'm a sucker for prison movies. The plot is unoriginal and unrealistic with gaping plot holes. The shocking plot twists are predictable and boring.

Have we ever seen a movie where the upstanding guy ends up in a prison with an unscrupulous warden? But this is no Shawshank Redemption. Have we ever seen a secret fight league run by the guards/warden? Yeah, but I can't even remember those movies names. This is worse than those.

One oddity is that they have the fighters wear body armor. Just weird. One stupid goof is they have Tyrese benching what looks to be 135 lbs. And struggling at it. I'm 5' 6", in ok shape, and I can do that easily.

They pulled in two actors with credible resumes; Jeremy Piven and Terrence Howard. Neither have decent showings. Pivens' fake southern accent and clownish behavior are amateurish. Howard's big brother teacher role is average at best.

Anyway, it was mildly entertaining for what it is.