starred up movie review

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Common sense media reviewers.

Hard, powerful prison drama offers a glimmer of hope.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie shows two ways of looking at an angry, l

The main character isn't a role model, nor are

The main character has raging outbursts of uncontr

The main character is shown full-frontally naked o

"F--k" and "f--king" are used

One prisoner is shown wearing an Adidas running ja

Some of the prisoners smoke cigarettes. Some also

Parents need to know that Starred Up is a well-made British prison drama about a troubled teen who becomes old enough to enter the adult prison system (the title is a slang term for that transition). The movie is extremely hard and unflinchingly realistic, with matter-of-fact violence and full-frontal male…

Positive Messages

The movie shows two ways of looking at an angry, lost youth. Some of the authorities see the need to treat him without mercy and with strong discipline. But a therapist feels that sympathy and listening could help. In this movie, nothing is that simple, and the problem isn't solved, but it appears that at least the main character has more of a chance than he once did. Also, a father learns to make a sacrifice for his teen son.

Positive Role Models

The main character isn't a role model, nor are any of the prisoners, but the prison therapist seems to be trying to do some good in the world. Whether he succeeds is another question.

Violence & Scariness

The main character has raging outbursts of uncontrolled violence. In one scene, he beats a man unconscious, with blood shown. Cops in riot gear go after him, and he proceeds to fight them as well. In another scene, several guards gang up on him, and he stops the fight by biting a man's crotch and staying there until the others back away. The main character tells a story about how he killed a "pedo" (pedophile). The main character creates a weapon from a toothbrush and a razor and attempts to kill a man with it. Prisoners try to hang the main character in his cell. Various amounts of blood are shown throughout.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The main character is shown full-frontally naked on more than one occasion, though it's generally not sexual in nature. When he first arrives in prison, he's asked to strip, and an officer must inspect his bottom for smuggled items. (This happens off screen.) In another scene, he gets into a fight while naked in the shower. A prisoner removes a cell phone from his anus (he does this while sitting on a toilet, and the act is mostly out of view). A secondary character kisses his cellmate. Some strong sexual innuendo during one of the therapy sessions.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k" and "f--king" are used almost constantly. "C--t" is also used very frequently. "S--t" is used a few times, and "ass" and "a--hole" are used.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

One prisoner is shown wearing an Adidas running jacket.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some of the prisoners smoke cigarettes. Some also appear to be dealing drugs, but this is shown in an offhand, background way.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Starred Up is a well-made British prison drama about a troubled teen who becomes old enough to enter the adult prison system (the title is a slang term for that transition). The movie is extremely hard and unflinchingly realistic, with matter-of-fact violence and full-frontal male nudity. Characters fight fairly frequently, and sometimes the fights come to blows, with blood shown. In one fight, a character bites down on a man's crotch and stays there until the fight is over. Language is extremely strong and constant, including multiple uses of "f--k" and "c--t." One prisoner retrieves a cell phone from his rear end (nothing graphic shown on screen), and the main character must have his own rear end inspected for contraband before entering the prison. Prisoners are shown smoking cigarettes, and some clandestine drug dealing appears to be happening, but it's not a major plot point. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 1 parent review

Shockingly good in all ways possible!

What's the story.

Stone-faced, hair-trigger teenager Eric Love (Jack O'Connell) is no stranger to prison, but now he's old enough to be transferred from youth prison to the real deal, or "starred up," as it's known in prison slang. Guarded and coiled and already with extensive prison experience under his belt, it's not long before Eric's explosive nature gets him in trouble. But a prison therapist, Oliver ( Rupert Friend ), recommends that Eric join his group sessions to work on his temper. It's not an easy process, but Eric also gets a helping hand from long-timer Neville ( Ben Mendelsohn ), who has a special relationship with the troubled youth.

Is It Any Good?

English director David Mackenzie ( Young Adam , Spread ) has never made films that were easy to watch or easy to like, but with STARRED UP, he seems to have found some kind of balance at last. As it begins, with its hard, unflinching look at a prisoner transferred to an adult institution, it might recall Steve McQueen's very tough Hunger (2008), but though Starred Up always retains its edge, it finds a sympathetic heart as well.

Certainly it could easily have turned into a goopy, Hollywood-lite movie about redemption, but vivid details and the excellent, wounded performances help anchor things in something closer to truth. O'Connell gives a star-making performance, and Friend plays the therapist with a certain resigned gravity. Mackenzie's camera could easily have slipped into documentary-like shaky-cam, but it's as reserved and unfazed as the concrete walls all around it. This is a powerful film that's also surprisingly watchable.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Starred Up 's violence and fighting. How does the movie present these things? How do they make you feel? How does their impact compare to that of less-realistic movie violence?

Is the main character likable? Is he a sympathetic character? Why or why not? How does he show his humanity?

Does the prison therapist appear to be doing some good for his patients?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 29, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : February 3, 2015
• Cast : Rupert Friend , Jack O'Connell , Ben Mendelsohn
• Director : David Mackenzie
• Studio : Tribeca Productions
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 106 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

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Movie Review

Damaged Men, Shifting Loyalties

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By A.O. Scott

• Aug. 26, 2014

The title of “Starred Up,” David Mackenzie’s brutal and boisterous new prison drama, refers to the status of its main character, Eric. Though he is legally still under age, Eric, played with method actor inwardness and movie star magnetism by Jack O’Connell, has been promoted to adult status in the British penal system. It’s not hard to see why. Brawny and athletic, he looks less like a child than like a young bull, and his capacity for violence unnerves even some of the hardened older criminals in whose midst he finds himself.

One of them is his father, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), a powerful inmate with a network of prisoners and guards at his beck and call. Eric and Neville’s relationship, full of rage, suspicion, shaky loyalty and blocked tenderness, is the dramatic heart of the movie, but Mr. Mackenzie (whose previous films include “Hallam Foe,” “Young Adam” and “Tonight You’re Mine”) is not one for sentimental tales of reconciliation.

“Starred Up,” based partly on the screenwriter Jonathan Asser’s experiences as a prison volunteer, puts the setting in front of the characters and the plot. Though it is, finally, an affecting story of two damaged men bound by blood and something like love (and also a thrillerish catalog of double crosses and shifting allegiances), it is, above all, a study in the patterns of chaos that govern penitentiary life.

The usual language of realism doesn’t quite apply to Mr. Mackenzie’s methods, which aim for visceral, nerve-jangling authenticity. He and the cinematographer, Michael McDonough, let the camera run through the cellblock, a noisy, unbearably tense place where peace consists of the temporary absence of bloodshed.

The feeling induced in the audience is something close to panic, a perfectly appropriate response and exactly the one that Eric can’t permit himself to show. Stripping down and soaping himself up for a battle in his cell that he knows he won’t win, he seems caught between pleasure and terror. He expects to be hurt and also to prove that he is someone not to be messed with. But at the same time, and throughout the film, you catch a flicker of sensitivity in his eyes and a hint behind his impassive features of the confused child he may still be.

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Movie reviews, Oscar predictions, and more!

‘Starred Up’ is emotional and brutal | movie review

Starred up, david mackenzie’s eighth film, is a brutal and emotional prison character study about a father and son.

? This review originally appeared in my weekly movie newsletter. You can sign up for it here .

Happy Thursday! Hope this week is great. I’ll be taking next week off for some mental clarity, but you can always see every movie I’ve ever recommended here .

Today’s movie is David Mackenzie’s drama Starred Up (2013)—streaming on Netflix and Prime Video . Though it was his eighth film, Starred Up is what elevated Mackenzie’s name past his less than stellar reputation as an okay-to-bad indie filmmaker. His next film Hell or High Water would earn him a Best Picture nomination. However, it all started with this hard-hitting drama. Here’s the trailer .

⚠️ Note: This movie gets pretty graphic in all aspects. Viewer discretion advised.

Starred Up is about Eric (Jack O’Connell), a juvenile inmate with… ahem, anger issues who is prematurely transferred to an adult prison where his father ( Ben Mendelsohn ) is jailed. While his temper gets him into trouble with just about everyone in the prison leaving him unsure of who to trust—even his father. It is 106 minutes long.

What I love about Starred Up is it’s almost devoid of sentimentality. Any that there is doused in a heavy dose of realism. However, despite its sometimes brutal depiction of prison life, it grounds all of it well-formed and complex characters that for all their flaws have redeeming qualities that keep you interested in them.

The propulsive narrative keeps you on your toes unable to anticipate what will come next, especially with Eric’s temper. And while the sudden bursts of violence keep Starred Up engaging, the most compelling scenes are the quieter ones where people work through their own traumas and maybe, just maybe, become better than before.

Starred is available to buy or rent on Prime Video , Apple TV , and YouTube .

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Uncut Gems : Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a diamond dealer in New York who is always looking for the best way to make big money—that usually means making high-risk bets that don’t always pay off. Over the course of a few days, he must find a way to pay off his debts before it’s too late.

In movie news: ? How could I make a profit out of you? ?

Disney looked in its reflection and saw ???. Mulan, one of the most anticipated releases of 2020 that was pushed back due to the pandemic, will be released on the Disney+ streaming platform on September 4, 2020. But there’s a catch . Details below.

• Though Mulan will be available on the streaming platform subscribers will need to pay an additional $30 fee to watch it. Yes, so you have to pay for Disney+ and then still pay for the movie.
• The economics of premium video-on-demand releases is already shaky at best and with a heft $200 million price tag on the project, it’s clear Disney would have to do *something* to make their money back.
• Although it seems ridiculous, I’m 80% sure that this going to be successful and deal out another blow to the theatrical experience.

❓ So, will you pay up to watch Mulan on Disney+? Reply and let me know.

Have a great weekend. I’ll see you in a week.

You’re the best — Karl ( @karl_delo )

? P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here .

i’m also a tomatometer-approved critic on rotten tomatoes you can find all my reviews here ., more movies, less problems.

Hey! I’m Karl . You can find me on Twitter here . I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic .

Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

• Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 12 Years A Slave Movie Review — A Beautiful, Unflinching Film
• Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Nominations: Snubs and Surprises
• Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture (Updated 2/16)
• Karl Delossantos https://smashcutreviews.com/author/karldelogmail-com/ 2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Director (Is Alfonso Cuarón a Lock to Win?)

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Starred Up Is an Edgy, Teeming Prison Thriller

As Eric Love, a violent teenager transferred earlier than normal — “starred up,” in the local argot — to a maximum-security adult British prison, the young actor Jack O’Connell lopes down the main corridor of cells radiating insolence, ready to strike back before anyone thinks to strike first. It’s a remarkable performance, both huge and subtle, not just for the ways in which O’Connell suggests Eric’s volatility in repose, but also for how he evokes the teen’s bitter wit. O’Connell wrinkles his forehead in mock bemusement the way Sean Connery used to, as if Eric is puzzling out a question to which he knows — and has always known, since before he could talk, probably — the answer. That answer is, of course, that he can depend on no one, and that everyone on earth is inclined to hurt him. He has barely arrived in the prison before he makes a run at the guards, latching onto one’s testicles with his teeth, practically inviting them to beat him down so that he can rise back up, bloody but in control. His hair-trigger hostility to authority figures makes things very confusing when, in the course of Starred Up , he’s confronted by two father figures, one an earnest group therapist named Oliver Baumer (Rupert Friend), the other his actual father, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), a dominating inmate whom Eric barely knows. The psychodrama is so thick, you can cut it with a straight razor.

Starred Up is an edgy, teeming thriller, brilliantly disorienting, making strange a world we thought we knew, at least from other movies. (I can’t discount the idea that some of the strangeness comes from the frequent unintelligibility of the dialogue, the words as impenetrable — at least to us Yanks — as they are convincing.) Director David Mackenzie and writer Jonathan Asser have created an ecosystem in which the blandly contemptuous “deputy governor” (Sam Spruell) has largely ceded control to the inmates, in which guards step in to quell the more egregious brutality but in the main allow (and at times abet) the hierarchy among prisoners. At the top of that ladder is a bespectacled inmate named Spencer (Peter Ferdinando), who sits in his cell before a chessboard, his hands free of blood but his mind meting out punishments and rewards. Slightly below him is Eric’s dad, who is suddenly, visibly flummoxed by what he perceived to be the responsibilities of fatherhood.

In Animal Kingdom , Mendelsohn played a psychotic mama’s boy with a near-sexual lust for control, and the more you watched him, the more frightening he became. He has a bit of that deadliness here — Neville is wired for conflict — but it’s tempered by tenderness, first for his cellmate and lover, then for the son he wants to protect. No, not just to protect. To guide. To oversee. Watching Eric ally himself with black prisoners makes him puzzled and anxious. And he’s driven to near-madness by the therapist, Baumer, whom he wants to help his son but also regards as a “posh boy” with airs — and a threat to his own influence. Neville can’t decide where he stands.

The do-gooder counselor is the film’s most familiar figure, but there’s a grim joke at the center of the group therapy scenes: These men are so prone to confrontation and so hypersensitive to slights that they’re always insulting one another’s mothers and then flying into rages. Nothing can ever get going. And while Eric — who attacks guards and prisoners alike with little provocation — does indeed need to develop self-control, Baumer might well be baumy for believing that helping prisoners open themselves up and be more “vulnerable” will equip them for survival in a facility full of predators. In any case, Baumer doesn’t seem long for this world. The higher-ups regard his humanism as misguided and a threat to their order.

Mackenzie and Asser aren’t nihilists, which can make all the difference in a prison movie. They see the logic behind the system, even if they loathe it. Every man in this two-tiered facility is busy doing something to give his life a purpose. Every man has his reasons, shortsighted as they may be. And though the tempo of Starred Up is jangly, the filmmakers build in moments of silence, in which Eric is alone in his cell, his guard down long enough to let him breathe. They and O’Connell never let us forget that Eric is a boy and that it’s possible to grow and change and find one’s humanity even in the most malignant of settings, to be — even behind bars — free.

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Starred Up Review

O'connell's the daddy now.

And while it’s not quite on the same level as A Prophet, the 2009 French film that dealt with a similar story, albeit over a longer period of time, it deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Daddy of the genre in the UK – Scum – with Starred Up powerful and intelligent filmmaking that demands to be seen.

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