The Escapist

The Escapist (2008, dir. Rupert Wyatt, 102 mins.) is an intriguing prison escape film for two reasons. First, the filmmakers intercut the prison break with its preparations. From the beginning, then, we see the characters breaking out of prison. As we do not see the result of the prison break until near the film’s end, there is typical prison break suspense, but we ultimately learn that the film is only partly interested in the escape, which takes up the bulk of the film’s running time. We learn this because of the film’s second break with the prison escape genre. Second, we learn near the film’s end that the main character, the prisoner who masterminded the escape (played by Brian Cox) did not escape, even though we have seen him fleeing with the escapees throughout the film. Instead, he has sacrificed himself in order to liberate his young cell mate and, as he dies at the hands of the prison’s criminal boss, he imagines the escape we have seen (cf. Train of Life).
The shift from “reality” to dream/imagination is more common in the horror genre than the prison escape. The surprise, then, will infuriate some viewers and entrance others. The emphasis upon imagined escape does, however, make the film an intriguing dialogue partner for Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor’s Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life (Routledge, 2nd ed., 1992). Their work grew out of interviews with convicts concerning the methods convicts used to manage captivity. Cohen and Taylor soon realized that people outside prison use similar techniques to avoid feeling trapped by the institutions and worldview that dominates culture. They also quickly learned that all such attempts at escape were doomed to failure. There was only, then, the struggle to escape.
Many would see religion as the ultimate escape attempt. The only other random religious comment that I have to make about The Escapist is the use of the prison chapel/confessional as the site for the escape’s origin and, of course, the use of the chapel crucifix to batter through the wall to freedom (cf. the use of the Bible in The Shawshank Redemption).