In Hell

A film set in a Russian prison. Kyle is an American engineer. He works there with his wife. He comes home late one night. His wife has been killed. The killer is caught and walks free in court. Kyle kills him in the courtroom. The sentence is heavy. He is sent to a prison where there are no rules at all. From there the film is a story about fighting. The warden makes the prisoners fight each other and the guards bet on it. Kyle refuses at first. Then he is beaten, then put in a hole, then he accepts. The fights are primitive. No ring, no rules, and nobody stops them. He starts winning. The warden makes money from him and protects him. He has a cellmate. The man numbered 451 does not speak and nobody touches him. What the narrative is interested in is not revenge but collapse: its idea is that to survive in prison the man becomes exactly the person he killed, and that he has to take it back. There is a break in the second half. Kyle refuses to fight, and that refusal is the narrative's real event. The violence is heavy and the narrative does not present it as entertainment. The images are cold and drained. The prison is built like a real place; the corridors are narrow and the light is poor. Jean-Claude Van Damme is trying to get out of the fight-star mould here and the part rests largely on acting. Ringo Lam directed; their third film together. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lawrence Taylor, Lloyd Battista and Chris Moir are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard prison films and Van Damme's darker period. Who it is not for: anyone looking for action as entertainment; the narrative is deliberately heavy and hopeless and the fights are without display.