Jailbreak

Jailbreak (2017)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Jimmy Henderson

Starring: Jean-Paul Ly, Laurent Plancel, Tharoth Sam, Dara Phang, Celine Tran

From: Kongchak Pictures

The most important revelation from this film: Red Dog beer is still made and sold in Cambodia.

Yesterday I came across an article on Bloody Disgusting which mentioned a film coming out later this year; it's from Cambodia and is known as The Prey. It then mentioned that some of the talent involved had made a movie known as Jailbreak; that was news to me so I found out it was on Netflix. I blame Netflix for not knowing that they had a riff on The Raid but how their interface has gotten much worse over the years is a rant for another occasion.

The plot is simple: several cops are escorting a snitch to prison, and the leader of the gang he was involved with (a woman named Madame Butterfly) wants him killed, so from the outside she orchestrates all the prisoners to be released from their cells. Yes, tonight there's going to be a jailbreak and indeed, all hell breaks loose, alarm and sirens wail as the officers are trapped in there so they have to use their Cambodian martial arts (Bokator, to be exact; don't confuse it with Muay Thai) to wreck dudes, and wreck dudes they do.

The movie is not as spectacular as The Raid-then again, what is? While there is bloodshed, it's not graphically gory like The Night Comes for Us. What we get here is a camera that moves around but usually not in a nauseating manner, and fun brawls. In fact, cuts are masked so it presents the appearance of being lengthy fights shot in one take. An important note is that this is much more comedic than The Raid; at least for me it was definitely hit or miss. Much to my relief, this element did not ruin the film, although I do wish some moments would have been different... and the ending can be questioned, even if you realize (like me) that there is a mid-credits scene.

Those that love The Raid and films of those ilk: as long as your expectations are not sky high and realize this is a low-budget production, you may enjoy this like I did. Two last things to note: the director (Jimmy Henderson) is a Brit who has lived in Cambodia for years, so perhaps that is why this has broken out into the West. Secondly, the lady who played Madame Butterfly (Celine Tran) used to be known as Katsuni and she appeared in a few hundred... ahem, “adult” movies. Most of those titles I can't even repeat here for the sake of decency (if you ever need a laugh one day to brighten your mood, look at her IMDb page) but I will safely presume this is better than RECTAL ROOTER 7.