Starred Up

Director: David Mackenzie
106 mins Film4 Archive

David Mackenzie’s Starred Up stars Jack O’Connell as a troubled and explosively violent teenager transferred to adult prison where he finally meets his match – a man who also happens to be his father.

Eric (Jack O’Connell) is a violent young offender prematurely thrown into the dark world of an adult prison. As he struggles to assert himself against the prison officers and the other inmates, he has to confront his own father, Nev (Ben Mendelsohn); a man who has spent most of his life in jail. As Eric forges allegiances with other prisoners, he learns that his rage can be overcome and discovers the new rules of survival. But there are forces at work which threaten to destroy him.