hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

An emotionally driven film. The storyline is unpredictable, but it left a lot of important questions open. That is why gave it only 7 star. There is a lot of violence in the movie, but it takes place in a prison environment so I do would rather label it "drama" than an action movie.

Eric Love (Jack O'Connell) is a violent juvenile who gets transferred to the adult prison or Starred Up. The first thing he does upon getting into his cell is to make a shiv. He mistakenly knocks out another prisoner and then attacks the guards in the subsequent mêlée. His absentee father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) tries to calm him down so that he can get treated by therapist Oliver Baumer (Rupert Friend).This movie isn't big on expositions. It's very raw and unpredictable. It's also not big on pronunciation and the accent can be a little thick. Honestly, I don't think I would get the father son relationship without reading it in the description and some of the characters are confusing. I can't follow everybody but Jack O'Connell shows good command of the screen even against great fellow actors. He is a promising newcomer after a stint on Skins. He could have an interesting career.

I came to this movie looking for other work the actor in Homeland, Rupert Friend, had done. The movie was violent and language was a very hardcore, (haven't heard the use of the C word that frequent in as far back as I can remember, and it wasn't used sparingly! It wasn't that unexpected based on the trailer though. It was well done, the end of the movie was touching, and with that I feel it achieved what it set out to do, but for me a lot of the sub plots, including Rupert Friends plot, went without conclusion, or explanation and ultimately felt like filler more so then pivotal to the main story line. I am certainly glad that I had the subtitles turned on when I watched the movie, for I am not up on all the British slang that goes on, and wouldn't have understood a small section of the dialogue.Good gritty British prison drama overall.

A UK prison drama directed by David Mackenzie (YOUNG ADAM 2003, 7/10 and ASYLUM 2005, 6/10), which has instantly leapfrogged Jack O' Connell to the most promising young actor echelon, who would win BAFTA Rising Star Award later for Angelina Jolie's UNBROKEN (2014), if his demonic performance in James Watkins' EDEN LAKE (2008, 8/10) has evaded you, you should definitely give it a try! STARRED UP is a term means putting a teenager offender to adult prison due to his violent nature, and the film is exclusively shot inside a UK prison and defies any flashbacks to elaborate on the history of main characters. Our protagonist is a 19-year-old boy Eric Love (O'Connell), we follow him being transferred to an adult prison where later we will be informed also resides his father Neville (Mendelssohn) who is serving life-sentence, which forcibly proposes a motive for Eric's unjustifiably savage conduct - he is just a boy looking for his absent father. One might suspect Mackenzie has applied a poetic license to depict a more relent prison environment to give Eric a full gamut of experience before prison officers put their revenge into action in the climate, otherwise, considering how corrupted the system is represented, one doubts Eric can ever survive retribution from the very place.The film charges an engaging pace and a fast editing scheme to offset its claustrophobic setting, Eric is aggressive, bull-headed and seethes with danger and wherever he goes, we become wary about the safety of those who are around, especially the awfully nice jailer Selfy (McDonnell), there are even female guards in a male's prison in UK, what a fair example of equity! The usual disputes among inmates are inferiorly grim compared with the authorities' viciousness under the surface, as Eric's opponents are far less competent to be life-threatening to him. Meanwhile a subplot is about Oliver Baumer (Friend), a voluntary inmate counsellor who organises group sessions for those who have severe violent tendency, prominently save Eric, the rest is all black. Oliver is designed as a ray of sunshine but what is equally intriguing is his back-story, a misfit in the society needs his patients more than they need him. Also the scenario reminiscent of Jacques Audiard's universally praised A PROPHET (2009, 9/10), but STARRED UP's main spotlight is always on the blood bond, a father's redemption to protect his own while the former is a masterful dissection of prison philosophy. O'Connell shines in his career-defining performance, impressively in his physical form and not shies away from nudity scenes and violence, which brings highly realistic impact on screen, Eric's transformation is predictable but he never overdraws the creditability during the process. Australian thespian Ben Mendelsohn, whose inherent criminal flair is put into great use, as Eric's equally hot-tempered father (something definitely runs in the genes), it is a showboating role, and he is perfect in it. Friend, on the contrary, is actually the more complicated character, but he remains unbelievably humble all the way through. It is rewarding to see Mackenzie bring us such a powerful genre cocktail of suspense, drama and affection, only if the aftertaste can be less cloying when things turn out exactly what viewers can possibly imagine, with a feel-good smugness on its tail.