Director – Cal McMau – 2025 – UK – Cert. 18 – 90m
*****
A prisoner’s chances of achieving parole are threatened by the arrival of a ruthless and manipulative new cellmate – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th
Taylor (David Jonsson from The Long Walk, Francis Lawrence , 2025; Alien: Romulus, Fede Alvarez, 2024; Rye Lane, Raine Allen-Miller, 2023), a young inmate in prison, is due for parole provided he behaves as required. However, his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Francis Lawrence, 2023; Benediction, Terence Davies, 2021; Robin Hood, Ridley Scott, 2010) has other ideas, including making money by dealing all manner of illicit goods from the outside.
This opens with a row between inmates, one of whom is determined to mete out punishment to whoever it was took his mobile phone. Very quickly, the situation descends into his suspected thief being assaulted with a television set that happens to be nearby. As another prisoner says to the one who carries out the assault, part in awe, part in jest, and part in newly-found respect, “Fucking TV, mate.”
Welcome to the world of Wasteman, the term used to designate central character Taylor who has been written off by British society. You want him to do what he has to do and follow the rules, but as soon as the authorities give him a wildcard of a new cellmate, he never has a chance at seeing that through.
From its TV assault opening, it’s a film that at once understands the genre in which it operates – the prison movie – and reinvents that genre from the ground up. Working from a screenplay by Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran, director McMau knows how to get what he wants out of actors. For a start, the film is extremely well cast and overflows with energy, tension, and testosterone toxicity. It has the feeling of having benefited from intensive rehearsal work, and all the characters possess a believablilty.
Jonsson has a vulnerability to him that makes you really want him to succeed even though the odds are stacked against him doing so. Blyth perfectly captures the threatening presence of his ambitious new cellmate.
They say the work of an actor is about finding interior truth, and you get lots of that here. Not that the film is navel-gazing, or indulgent, or any such thing – it absolutely isn’t. It’s as hard and tough as any prison movie you’ve never seen, but nothing like any of them.
The inspiration apparently came from mobile phone footage shot in UK prisons.
This is a British movie of which all concerned can be extremely proud. It may run a mere 90 minutes, but it packs one hell of a punch.
Wasteman is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, February 20th.
Trailer: