Review of The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (2007) by Palina P — 02 Jul 2010

I want to say this is a great movie, but two things are stopping me: the sound design and the direction. The direction, the lesser of the evils, is understandable but early on it is sort of bonkers. A lot of the decisions seem unnecessary.

Why write the supposed significant phrases on the screen? If we really can't here what he's saying, maybe they should have thought of sub-titles...It gets better after a while, it's less obviously intrusive into the interviews and I do fully get and agree with the animation.

It works and it's a good way of doing it. But in the first few parts its all more frenetic and unnecessary. The bigger issue is the sound mix. It's terrible. It's one of the worst mixed DVDs I have ever heard and worse there are no subtitles.

Once you get used to the protagonist's accent it becomes more bearable, but still they drown him out in noise and music regularly. This is too bad because the story is very compelling (the more so for the guy filming himself and his family, just like Capturing the Friedmans) and finding the guard was a coup as well.

This could be a classic documentary about arbitrary and wrongful imprisonment, but they really should have thought a little more about the design of the film, and maybe they should have watched the master DVD before they greenlighted it, you know?