The very last film I saw at Sundance this year, at a lively 10 p.m. screening and seated next to the dapper James Rocchi, was The Escapist. It was a perfect ending for the festival, and a great "guy movie" to boot (Rocchi and I are nothing if not burly, rugged men): Brian Cox leads a bunch of Limey blokes, including Joseph Fiennes, on a daring escape from a British prison. Familiar premise, but well executed with a few twists. Rocchi's rave review is here. The flick was well received during its world premiere at Sundance, and yet somehow it didn't get picked up by any distributors before the fest ended. Now, finally, THINKFilm has come to the rescue. Variety reports that the distributor has paid about $1 million for the film and plans to release it in October, starting small and expanding over the course of several weeks.
I'm really happy about this. The plot may sound ordinary, and at its heart maybe it is. But it's a thrilling, visceral movie that I think audiences will really go for once they get a chance to see it. Rocchi said it best (as usual): "[The film] not only works as a brilliant, twisting existential expansion of the traditional prison break film; it also works as a crackerjack example of the traditional prison break film." So keep an eye out for it this fall, and let's all send THINKFilm a thank-you card.
P.S. If the title The Escapist makes you think of the comic book created by characters in the brilliant novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, you're not alone. Sorry to get your hopes up! Maybe that movie will get made someday....
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-12-2008 @ 7:31PM
FutureColumnist said...
Amazing Adventures is supposedly, possibly in the works. We'll see. But make an entirely separate film completely about The Escapist? If only...
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4-13-2008 @ 2:03AM
Chris said...
There's a reason no one picked up this movie. I was there at the big sold-out screening at Sundance, and when the lights came up you could hear the sound of 1,300 people shaking their heads. In its entirety, the film is so amazingly, shockingly, disappointing, that you can only wonder how such great actors got talked into something like this. I respect people enough not to spoil anything, but have your friend go see it and he'll be happy to tell you, I'm sure, what the director does that can only be described as the lamest of cop-out cliches.
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