Wasteman: A Must-See Prison Thriller for Ministers

Wasteman (18, 90 mins)

Rating:

Verdict: Violent but brilliant

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (15, 113 mins)

Rating:

Verdict: Painfully funny

Brutal and harrowing, the gripping prison thriller Wasteman shows us both that British film-making is in good shape – and that the British penal system is not.

It is a tremendously assured debut feature from director Cal McMau, with a riveting lead performance by David Jonsson, who without much fanfare is emerging as one of the most skilled actors of his generation.

He was a delight in the sweet, effervescent South London-set rom-com Rye Lane (2023), but his role here couldn’t be more different. His character, Taylor, is a long-time inmate trying to stay in one piece, somewhat against the odds, ahead of his impending release.

Taylor has the dead eyes and shambling walk of an institutionalised drug addict. For supplying fatal drugs himself he has been stuck in prison for 13 years, and the film’s title refers to his status in the eyes of society; he’s considered a waste of time, money and space.

Inside, everyone knows he’s a junkie, but he’s quiet and inoffensive, with a job in the canteen and a sideline cutting other prisoners’ hair. To his surprise he has been told that, having behaved well inside, he will shortly go free.

Presumably, he’s a beneficiary of the controversial ‘emergency early release scheme’, introduced by the Labour government to combat overcrowding.

McMau was reportedly moved to make this film after seeing real mobile-phone footage taken in prisons. With actual former prisoners as extras, it is presented as an authentic depiction of life behind bars, a system teetering on anarchy, with drugs and mobile phones delivered by drone and daily assaults carried out with impunity.

Taylor is on the verge of leaving all that behind. First, though, he must deal with a psychotic new cellmate, Dee (Tom Blyth, also terrific). For those of us whose idea of prison life was gently forged by the glorious 1970s sitcom Porridge, Dee and Taylor have very little in common with Godber and Fletch, except that they do seem to form a bond of sorts.

Dee helps Taylor make contact with the 14-year-old son he barely knows, but his motives are not altruistic. It’s all about control.

Dee, aggressive and insolent towards the ‘screws’, is determined to become the prison’s de facto boss, but there are two other hard-knock inmates with different ideas.

The narrative follows Taylor’s increasingly desperate attempts to navigate a course between both factions, while also trying to clean up his drug habit and stay clear of trouble so that he can get out and start rebuilding his life, and a proper relationship with his boy.

As all this unfolds, McMau builds the tension superbly.

But be warned, Wasteman is also exceptionally violent, a gut-punching drama in the uncompromising tradition of Scum (1979) and Starred Up (2013). Even if you decide not to see it, Home Office ministers should.  

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not that different: there’s no prison, and it’s notionally a comedy, but it’s similarly about one person’s ever-more frantic efforts to deal with a series of apparently insurmountable challenges.

This is Linda, played so beautifully by Rose Byrne that she already has a Golden Globe to show for it, and is second-favourite to be anointed Best Actress at next month’s Academy Awards.

Linda is a psychotherapist, responsible for helping others find balance in their lives –even as hers tilts dangerously towards the abyss.

She has a sick daughter needing constant care, which becomes even trickier when they are forced to move into a shabby motel after their apartment floods, following a spectacular ceiling collapse.

Her husband (Christian Slater) is away at sea, adding to her stress with his judgmental calls home, and she gets precious little empathy from her therapist colleague (Conan O’Brien).

Mary Bronstein, the writer-director, has said that she channelled her own experiences of looking after a seriously ill child, calling her film not autobiographical (thank heavens for that) but ‘emotionally true’. It certainly offers a madcap take on the

multi-tasking demands of motherhood, interspersed with some moments of pure surrealism and others of riotous black comedy, as when Linda tries to deal with a hamster at large in her car.

Significantly, Byrne gets lots of unsparing close-ups yet the

camera only once dwells on her daughter; this is a story about a child’s illness only insofar as it affects her mother. It’s also significant that two of the film’s producers are Bronstein’s husband, Ronald, who co-wrote the recent hit Marty Supreme with Josh Safdie, and Safdie himself.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You fizzes with that whirling, kinetic, chaotic energy of both Marty Supreme and 2019’s Uncut Gems, which Ronald Bronstein wrote with both Safdie brothers. It is a rewarding but crazy film. You will rarely spend a more exhausting 113 minutes sitting down.

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