Starred Up

Eric Love is a nineteen-year-old offender whose record of violence gets him moved early from a young offenders institution into an adult prison. He arrives with a defiant attitude, but the adult population is a different proposition, and he quickly makes enemies among both staff and prisoners. The facility also holds his father, Neville, from whom he has been estranged for years, and their reunion is far from a warm one. When a volunteer psychotherapist named Oliver runs an anger management group for inmates, Eric is drawn into it, opening the possibility of another way of living even as violence and the prison's internal power struggles close in around him.

The film is directed by David Mackenzie, working from a screenplay by Jonathan Asser, with Gillian Berrie producing. It is Mackenzie's seventh feature, arriving between You Instead and Hell or High Water in his filmography. Jack O'Connell plays Eric, Ben Mendelsohn plays Neville, and Rupert Friend plays Oliver, with David Ajala, Peter Ferdinando and Gershwyn Eustache Jnr among the supporting cast.

Made in the United Kingdom and Ireland with backing from Lipsync Productions, Film4, Northern Ireland Screen and Creative Scotland, the film took about 3 million dollars worldwide, a modest return for a prison drama of its scale. On IMDb it holds 7.3 out of 10 from around 51,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from roughly a thousand. A critics' rating of 7.9 from 116 reviews places it above both audience scores.