Lockdown: "Cell 211"

Cell 211 is a punchy Spanish prison movie, apparently inspired by real events. Fresh-faced prison guard Juan (Alberto Ammann) is taking a tour of the facilities in which he's about to start work when a riot happens to break out. His senior colleagues manage to escape, but Juan is left behind enemy lines in the cell of the title, and - stashing his phone, his shoelaces, and his belt - has the wherewithal (not to mention the balls) to try and pass as a new inmate. While the authorities procrastinate, Juan's ability to write down the prisoners' demands - a USP, given prison literacy rates - earns him a place at the right-hand of top dog Malamadre (Luis Tosar), while attracting the suspicions of this bad mother's minions.

Though it has site-specific wrinkles - Malamadre takes a cellful of Basque separatists hostage, meaning the authorities cannot by law send in a SWAT team to end the siege - Cell 211 mostly serves up the generic pleasures one might expect from an 18-rated episode of Prison Break: some business with contraband mobile phones, the threat the hero might get ratted out at any minute. Even for a prison movie, it has a hang-up on a swaggering idea of masculinity that is somehow very Spanish, and wouldn't appear out of place in a Bigas Luna treatment of the same material: a scene in which the cellblock's prisoners collectively admire Juan's manhood is followed by a cutaway to the hero's heavily pregnant wife back home, establishing a potential for BSD behaviour that will emerge as the riot labours on.

Mitigating against this, to some degree, is the effective way Juan is put through the wringer both physically and psychologically, as he's given renewed reason to resent those colleagues who've left him behind to save their own skins, and ends up becoming an unlikely advocate for prison reform. Despite its substantial awards presence - the film took home eight Spanish Goyas last year - it doesn't cut too deep, but director Daniel Monzón fills the frame with a convincing roster of ugly mugs and ne'er-do-wells, and the role of Malamadre elicits nicely shaded work from Tosar, the wifebeater from Take My Eyes, as a bullet-headed overlord who speaks in a low growl because he knows he doesn't have to shout to make himself heard.

Cell 211 opens in selected cinemas from Friday.