Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: Stallone is pushed to the limit in a gripping prison film.
Before escaping from a new kind of prison alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Escape, Sylvester Stallone had already foundered in the corridors of a highly secure penitentiary.
Released in cinemas in 1989, High Security by John Flynn tells the story of Frank Leone, a prisoner with impeccable behavior and about to leave the prison after six months of detention for a light sentence.
But just a few days before his release, Frank is transferred to an ultra-secure prison, under the orders of Warden Drumgoole, an odious guard who is also his worst enemy. The latter will make him experience all kinds of humiliation, intimidation and brutality with a specific goal: to push him to commit a misstep.
And who better than the actor Donald Sutherland to play this perverted and vengeful guardian on screen, with piercing blue eyes? For his part, Sylvester Stallone embodies a prisoner who is at once fragile, tormented and tortured… But never submissive.
Stallone at the gates of the penitentiary
Frank Leone, this deeply wounded character, was born one before Rocky III and one year after Rocky V. And as usual, Sylvester Stallone offers spectators action scenes worthy of the name and plunges us, not with a certain brutality, as close as possible to the prison atmosphere.
And don’t think that Frank Leone’s character lets himself be walked on. Because after several months of physical and psychological torture, the model inmate will engage in a furious bare-handed fight against his worst enemy.
A gripping prison film, in which Sylvester Stallone sows the seeds of its future great Escape (which will see the light of day twenty-four years later High security).
Tonight on C8 at 9:20 p.m.
