Animal Factory (2000)

I liked Animal Factory, not really because it pays homage to Shawshank Redemption, but simply because of how dark and gritty the film is in portraying prison life. Violent, unnerving, shocking at times but still it holds a message that we house these people in prisons with poor quality with the real animals. Young offenders put in with experienced and hardened prisoners who manipulate them.

My only issue was the duration of the film, I kinda get critical of short films especially ones I really enjoy and don't want to finish too quickly. I can't criticise the performances, as its one the strongest suits of the film with both Dafoe and Furlong. However to me it was Wiilem Dafoe who stole the screen for me, as to me he is an amazing actor. In the film, he portrayed a real down to earth man who had years of experience.

All in all Animal Factory is an unknown film, but it more than made up for it in many ways. Had it not gone straight to DVD, and actually had some advertising and screened in cinemas it could have made a tidy profit. If you like your prison dramas, gritty and dark Animal Factory is your kind of thing.

Fmovies: "Animal Factory" is a plodding journeyman drama about prison life, uncommonly tame as prison flicks go. The film focuses on the Defoe character, a long time inmate who "owns this jail", and his relationships with other inmates, prison employees, and especially a new pretty boy convict played by Furlong. The film is technically okay, artistically nothing special, well cast and acted, with a the story which paints an apparently honest picture of prison life from prison politics to unspoken/unwritten codes, etc. A worthy effort and an okay watch for those with an interest in prison flicks.

Probably the first prison movie I have seen that in no way glorifies prison life. This movie makes it very clear that prison is a dark place and the only people that dwell their are losers not winners (forget the rap music and OZ). There is no good and bad in this prison just those who will make it and those who won't.

The movie follows Edward Furlong; a young drug dealer who is small, skinny and is eyed by every inmate but one (Willem Defoe) as an easy target for rape. I genuinely feared for him and I still shudder to this day over the thought of entering an American prison. However the film does get slow towards the end and it loses its atmosphere once your safe in the knowledge that Edward Furlongs character is well protected by his new friends.

It has to be said though, Mickey Rourke stole the show as a drag queen. One of his best performances. A must see.

Animal Factory fmovies. Over the years there have been made many prison movies,but I dont think many of them really reflect how terrible a prison is.I think this movie shows it in a more realistic way than many other movies.The movie tells us that you got to have connections within the prison to survive and that friends are everything.This movie is the portrait of a young boy who ends up in a prison,and luckily he gets introduced with one of the leaders among the white inmates and therefor has a chance. In the roles you'll find Willem Dafoe (which does a wonderful job in this movie) and Edward Furlong who also is very good.As some other inmates you'll find Danny Trejo who always looks really tough and scary and Mickey Rourke in totally new role that I never thought would work for him.See the movie and find out what I am talking about.

With it being an election year, the pressure is on when a privileged white kid is found with a considerable amount of drugs and the judge sends him down for five years. With his boyish good looks and youth Ron Decker is a clear mark for rapists and gangs. However, early in his time he gets connected to the head of one of the gangs, Earl Copen, who takes him under his wing and looks after him.

Being a big fan of Oz, the trailer for this film drew me simply because the similarities to this series was a draw to me. Despite the big names attached to this film I can only assume it did limited business in the US as it seemed to take years to reach the UK. Despite this wait I was still interested in seeing it and got it on dvd recently. The film is more realistic than the hyper brutal Oz, as it focuses on real characters without ignored the reality of rape and gangs. The dramas of prison life are on the screen and are dramatic, but the script has a few problems.

It is never satisfactorily explained why Copen takes Decker under his wing. Why does this hardened, bitter lifer take to this new fish over any other one? The answer isn't ever made clear and is barely hinted at; after a while the film seems to want to just get past this whole issue and move on with the story. This it does well and the story is interesting and involving (except that whole niggle), at least until a terribly unsatisfying cop-out ending which really left me feeling disappointed in the whole thing.

The cast are excellent though and are mostly used well. Dafoe is good and manages to keep his character likeable. My only complaint about his performance is that I didn't get the feeling that his Copen was hard or bitter enough to really convince me that he had spent his whole life in prison, he was too nice and too considerate. Furlong is better because he has a simpler role, he plays his gradual transformation well. The support cast features a lot of smaller roles, some from familiar support roles playing standard felons such as Trejo, Cassel and La Botz. Outside of these, Rourke and Arnold both stand out playing very different roles that are as effective as they are brief.

Buscemi has a small role but his main contribution here is as director. He directs with a refreshing honesty, he isn't overly stylish and he doesn't over egg dramatic cake in the same way as the maker of Oz will generally have quite a brutal feel to most of the scenes. He could have done with making some of the scenes a bit more dramatic but it works fine as it is.

Overall this is an OK film but never a really good one. The dramatics of a prison story are there to be had but the script doesn't use them that well, eventually falling into a rather clichéd escape plot that only serves to take away from the reality of the film and the characters. It starts well and has promise but Bunker's script seems to get lost past the halfway mark and sadly ends with a climax than only serves to disappoint.

Buscemi's prison flick is oddly upbeat and shallow for the writer-director of the much better "Trees Lounge." We have a young drug war convict thrown to the wolves, but where is he thrown? This is prison as a place where, if he slinks off whenever trouble starts, a con can avoid most of the worst and shoot up with his pals regularly -- sometimes, courtesy of a kindly prison official! It's the joint as a center of homosexual rape, unless you happen to be doe-eyed, red-lipped 21-year old Edward Furlong, in which case you'll receive all the chaste fatherly ministrations of the skinhead hardass who happens to run your block and desires not your ass but the preservation of your dignity (an intellectual too, he'll even take an interest in your reading, steering you clear of an author who is a known "police state bitch"). These Speilbergian dimensions sit uneasily, to say the least, with the movie's cultivation of a hard edge and undermine what might have been a more honest, less sentimental view of survival.

Verité aside, this wish-fulfillment stuff is watchable for Willem Defoe's determined attempt to wrench more depth from his character than the script can provide. We never find out why such a feared badass is suddenly so caring, and what we witness isn't enough to go on to supply our own convincing answer. Then there is the complete lack of chemistry between the principals; Edward Furlong's rather bland, disaffected character hardly seems compelling enough to risk Defoe's rep or life over. We're hammered thematically with the message that caring means vulnerability, but even teen love stories can tell us that. What's more critical to this context, yet never addressed, is: why bother?

Then there's the real crime. At this moment in U.S. history our prisons are run by private companies who profit blithely from the violence boiling within; outside these pens, the drug war consumes billions of dollars in a fruitless quest. Although it is his premise, Buscemi has nothing to say about this; nothing. In fact, he has less than nothing to say, since his film's impossible sentimentality mocks the reality of the real-life Furlongs thrown daily to real-life wolves.

Yes, it's all beautifully art directed, the cellblocks washed out in harsh institutional light. Mickey Rourke's minor role as a drag queen is weirdly moving, and Tom Arnold's brief appearance as a sexual psychopath has some punch. The soundtrack by John Lurie is edgy and interesting. Just don't come looking for any narrative sense, believable motivation, or much social awareness.