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12 Movie Wardens You'd Hate to Find Yourself in Jail With
Strother Martin as The Captain "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) "What we've got here is... failure to communicate." It's not just the most famous line ever spoken by a movie warden; it's one of the most famous lines in movie history. (The American Film Institute ranked it the 11th most memorable movie quotation of all time on their list "100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes") Many movie wardens play at gentility: all eloquence, kind words, and good manners until the inevitable meltdown, but Strother Martin's Captain has a downright grandfatherly presence in his early appearances: speaking warmly about his prison camp in that nasal Southern twang and quietly observing his charges from a rocking chair on his office's porch. That approach might work with most of the inmates, but not with Luke Jackson (Paul Newman). The Captain gives Luke a preemptive stint in "the box" to ensure he doesn't try to escape in order to attend his mother's funeral; instead, it provokes Luke to try one escape after another. After his first failed attempt, the Captain parades the captured Luke in front of the other inmates; when Luke talks back, the Captain loses his cool. "Don't you ever talk to me that way!" he screams. It's then that the Captain says his famous line, perhaps most memorably because what he is trying to communicate should be entirely clear. It's just that Luke refuses to listen. 
Barbara Steele as Superintendent McQueen "Caged Heat" (1974) For a Roger Corman-produced women-in-prison exploitation picture, Jonathan Demme's "Caged Heat" is awfully experimental. It features extensive dream sequences and some very thinly veiled subtext about feminism and sexuality. And yet even a film this willing to play with convention is still beholden to the evil warden syndrome. (It's also beholden to the "women in prison tend to shower a lot syndrome" too, but that's a conversation for another time.) Barbara Steele's Superintendent McQueen even looks sinister with her schoolmarm clothes, slicked back hair, big glasses, and cold scowl. Slowly prowling the halls in her mechanized wheelchair, McQueen's repressed, robotic demeanor stands in contrast with the sensual, free-spirited inmates. And, of course, she's not to be trifled with -- "We punish here as well as correct," she warns. Though McQueen doesn't win the award for most depraved prison employee -- that would be the prison medical director who sedates his patients then molests them -- she's no saint, either. She tacitly condones his bad behavior by authorizing the doctor's use of electro-shock therapy in order to sedate an agitated general population. Her only concern? Making sure he gets the women to sign the release forms before he turns them into vegetables. Experiments are well and good, but you've got to be covered in case they go bad, the same way you'd make an experimental women-in-prison film with lots of shower scenes. 
Eddie Albert as Warden Hazen "The Longest Yard" (1974) It is a curious fact of prison movies, particularly those of the variety featuring corrupt or sadistic wardens, that they make us root for the criminals who make up the villains of just about every other movie involving cops and crooks. Consider "The Longest Yard," the story of a football game between the prisoners and guards at a Florida jailhouse. Both sides play dirty, but we root for the cons. Why? Because the cons break the rules, but they do it for the right reasons. The guards cheat on the orders of their boss, Warden Hazen, who takes so much pride in his prison's semi-pro football team he can't bear to see them lose at the hands of the inmates. So he threatens their captain, former pro Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds), with an extended sentence if he doesn't throw the game. (He's previously issued his second-in-command a similar ultimatum: win this season's championship or look for a new job.) So, yes, Crewe might lead the "Mean Machine" by sending one guy to the hospital with back-to-back intentional throws at his groin -- but only in retaliation for the guards' own sneaky moves. They cheat with integrity. 
Patrick McGoohan as Warden "Escape From Alcatraz" (1979) Patrick McGoohan plays the evil Warden with icy fastidiousness. A stickler for personal grooming, he flicks out his gleaming nail clipper while speaking with Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood), the high IQ inmate who will mastermind the only escape from Alcatraz prison. Stalking around his office with a ramrod posture and daggers in his eyes, McGoohan is a frightening vision of bureaucratic amorality. He over-enunciates every word, snapping his jaw shut with military precision before harassing a pet bird in its cage. That this blunt metaphor is effective is a tribute to McGoohan's controlled ferocity. He is the antagonist in Don Siegel's otherwise austere drama, a film more concerned with the process of escaping than the escape itself. Siegel spends as much time attending to dirt disposal as the Warden does on his well-manicured fingernails. Without McGoohan's juicy performance, "Escape From Alcatraz" would be as static as Bresson's sublime prison movie, "A Man Escaped." And despite the fact that Warden is clearly a dramatic construction doesn't detract from his power, for whether he's withdrawing paints from an aging artist or stamping on a memorial flower, McGoohan imbues him with an unforgettably soulless menace. 
Donald Sutherland as Warden Drumgoole "Lock Up" (1989) I'm sure real wardens have better things to do than to bug the shit out of the one prisoner in their jail they don't like. Thankfully, Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) from "Lock Up" is not a real warden. If he was, he'd have responsibilities at Gateway Prison — filing paperwork, staff sensitivity training, meetings with state officials, requisitioning funds, and so on. Instead, Drumgoole ignores all of these things in order to focus his attention on Sylvester Stallone's Frank Leone. Apparently, he holds a grudge against Leone for escaping a previous prison he worked at, exposing his shady penitentiary practices, and thus costing him his job. By way of payback, Drumgoole has Leone transferred to Gateway, where he prolongs his delousing treatment to a dangerous degree, cruelly cutting short his conjugal visits just as he's about to get lucky and even stands outside his cell all night long, banging on the bars so the guy can't sleep. Again, I'm not an expert, but if this is how Drumgoole behaved the first time around, then he deserved to be fired. If he stopped pointing fingers at others for a few minutes, he might realize that. 
Stephen Tobolowsky as Warden Holliday “Wedlock” (1991) This high-concept, no-budget gem from “Alligator” auteur Lewis Teague places bespectacled character actor Stephen Tobolowsky as the warden of Camp Holliday, a privately run prison established "sometime in the future." Warden Holliday is a meek fellow fond of flower pruning, but he also invented a collar that blows off prisoners' heads. The inmates are anonymously assigned a partner, and if either strays 100 yards from the facility, kaboom! This ingeniously sadistic system turns the condemned into guards, as any individual's escape marks another's doom. Enter electronics expert Frank Warren (Rutger Hauer), whose fiancé Noelle (a manic Joan Chen) betrayed him after a diamond heist. He took multiple slugs to the chest, but cleverly hid the rocks before his near-demise (and arrest). Hauer is remarkably likable here, shedding his usual stoic robot act for a Z-grade Cary Grant wit, the perfect foil to Tobolowsky's smarmy uptight intellectual. Warden Holliday is hell-bent on finding the stones, and employs his dry humor ("all you non-conformists are alike") and cruelty (his version of "the hole" is underwater) in an attempt to crack him. Needless to say, soon after Holliday's "no one has ever escaped" routine, Frank is off to the races with a lithe Mimi Rogers in tow. 
Ho Ka-Kui as Warden Sugiyama "Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki" (1991) A lot of movie wardens could be described as "monstrous," but Warden Sugiyama is the only literal monster on our list. He's the head of a horrific prison in the far-flung year 2001, in a dystopian future where "capitalistic countries have privatized all government organizations. Prisons, like car parks, have become franchised businesses." His prison is less a car park, and more an opium den; he runs a heroin processing plant right out of the jail. And for his final confrontation with the heroic prisoner Riki (Fan Siu-Wong), he transforms from a shrimpy bureaucrat into a gigantic, rippling brute with a Cro-Magnon brow and fearsome fangs. "The warden of any prison has to be the very best in kung fu!" he declares before turning into the Incredible Hulk if the Incredible Hulk were a bald Asian guy. Just how mean is Sugiyama? When he arrives at the prison, he's so displeased with the red carpet that's been laid out for him that he finds the inmate responsible, criticizes his eyesight, then stabs one of his eyes out. Sugiyama's so brutal that Riki -- a man who casually vivisects his opponents with his bare hands – is outraged enough by his behavior to get on his high horse and declare "Enough! We're human beings!" Look, Riki may punch a guy's jaw so hard that it erupts through the top of his skull, but he didn't rip out a guy's eyeball. Oh wait, he did that too. Never mind. 
Kurtwood Smith as Prison Director Poe “Fortress” (1993) Fear the Intestinator! In Stuart Gordon's richly drawn dystopia, the U.S. has instituted a one child policy and handed its prison system over to private enterprise, led by the Men-Tel Corporation. Christopher Lambert's Brennick lands in their clink after failing to spirit his pregnant wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) across the border into Mexico, following the death of their first child. Prison Director Poe (Kurtwood Smith, “That ’70s Show”) is the calm hand that controls the mind-control machinery of the prison. His first weapon is the Intestinator, a devious device shoved into the inmates' digestive system, and activated to inflict varying levels of pain. At its max, it explodes their guts onto the stainless steel walls. Poe also has access to their dreams, beamed into a bank of video screens, in an attempt to outlaw desire and instill obedience. Poe shows an unnatural interest in their sexual fantasies, his pasty white face shoved into an extreme close-up as his neutered personality marvels at the wonders of the physical world. 
Michael Lerner as The Warden “No Escape” (1994) It's the year 2022, and the prison system is run by private corporations for fun and profit. The corpulently sweaty warden (Michael Lerner) of the Leviticus prison has a secret: he dumps his most undesirable inmates onto an island, Absolom, and has them fight to the death. That's just what wealthy industrialists do. His only mistake was sending former Special Forces Captain J.T. Robbins (a jittery Ray Liotta) into the battleground and telling him that there is "no possibility of escape." That's always a bad move. Robbins soon assumes a leadership position with the Insiders, the civilized segment of the island administered by a subdued Lance Henriksen. They're engaged in constant battle with the Outsiders, whose S&M gear is straight out of “The Road Warrior.” They're led by the wisecracking Walter Marek (Stuart Wilson), who joshingly claims to have removed all the heads of state, and then dumps a bag of human appendages on the ground. The Warden views all the carnage from the privacy of his office, nervously tittering when a major attack is about to take place. Voyeuristic pleasure doesn't last forever, alas, and he is soon thrust into the bloody "entertainment" he created. 
Bob Gunton as Warden Norton "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) Warden Norton tells his prisoners that he believes in two things: discipline and the Bible. Those who've seen "The Shawshank Redemption" know that the warden believes in a third thing – money – and he acquires it through the exploitation of his other two principles. Once Norton learns of inmate Andy Dufresne's (Tim Robbins) aptitude at accounting, he establishes an "Inside Out" program at Shawshank, which put his cons to use on public works projects, ostensibly to further their rehabilitation, but actually serves as a means to embezzle the money the program brings in. Director Frank Darabont cleverly visualizes the way the corrupt Norton, who is often seen sporting a cross pin on his lapel, uses religion as a disguise for sin: the office safe where he keeps his cooked books is hidden behind an embroidered picture of a line of scripture (it reads "His judgement cometh, and that right soon"). The warden's hypocrisy extends to his ultimate fate, when he performs an act upon himself that no disciplined Bible reader would do in the face of deserved punishment. 
James Gandolfini as Colonel Winter "The Last Castle" (2001) Movie wardens always have these great office windows that they can use to keep careful watch on the yard and the convicts below. "The Last Castle"'s Col. Winter loves to stand by his and glower, and as his feud with inmate Eugene Irwin (Robert Redford) escalates, he is frequently found gazing outward, observing his enemy and plotting his next move. The difference between Winter and Irwin, a former lieutenant general, is that Irwin stands with his men, leading by example, while Winter stands above his, leading through intimidation. The film had the misfortune of winding up with a release date just a month after September 11th, when a story about questioning authority – particularly military authority – felt drastically out of step with the national mood. Ironically, "The Last Castle" now reads as a perfect critique of the foreign policy mess that followed, with Col. Winter and his lack of personal battlefield experience, poor planning, and questionable decision-making playing the role of the Bush Administration. Not surprisingly, the film's most meaningful gesture comes when they rioting inmates get their hands on an enormous catapult – don't ask me how – and launch a rock through Winter's precious office window, disrupting his seemingly untouchable sanctuary. 
Joan Allen as Warden Hennessey “Death Race” (2008) Paul W.S Anderson adapts “Death Race 2000” (1975) by shrinking it. Instead of a cross-country bloodbath, Anderson relocates it to a jail, where desperate inmates battle to win their freedom. It's 2012, and another economic collapse leads to a spike in crime and (again) the privatization of the prison system. To make money, Terminal Island has invented the Death Race, a PPV event where prisoners equip cars with heavy artillery and annihilate each other for high ratings. Five victories earn freedom, but Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) ensures that doesn't happen, sabotaging cars and weapons with barely suppressed glee. An uptick in viewers justifies any act of brutality. Her sadism is soft-spoken, in a low, husky tone that mesmerizes guards and inmates alike. After she disposes of the most popular driver, Frankenstein, she brings in Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) to don his mask, unwilling to lose his fans. Ames is played by Statham with his usual sarcastic bravado, his crooked smirk slashing through the competition. He soon realizes he's destined for Hennessey's meat grinder, and threatens to quit. Allen is unflappable. Her voice hardly rises above a whisper, but it's the most violent weapon in the movie.
Strother Martin as The Captain "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) "What we've got here is... failure to communicate." It's not just the most famous line ever spoken by a movie warden; it's one of the most famous lines in movie history. (The American Film Institute ranked it the 11th most memorable movie quotation of all time on their list "100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes") Many movie wardens play at gentility: all eloquence, kind words, and good manners until the inevitable meltdown, but Strother Martin's Captain has a downright grandfatherly presence in his early appearances: speaking warmly about his prison camp in that nasal Southern twang and quietly observing his charges from a rocking chair on his office's porch. That approach might work with most of the inmates, but not with Luke Jackson (Paul Newman). The Captain gives Luke a preemptive stint in "the box" to ensure he doesn't try to escape in order to attend his mother's funeral; instead, it provokes Luke to try one escape after another. After his first failed attempt, the Captain parades the captured Luke in front of the other inmates; when Luke talks back, the Captain loses his cool. "Don't you ever talk to me that way!" he screams. It's then that the Captain says his famous line, perhaps most memorably because what he is trying to communicate should be entirely clear. It's just that Luke refuses to listen. 
Barbara Steele as Superintendent McQueen "Caged Heat" (1974) For a Roger Corman-produced women-in-prison exploitation picture, Jonathan Demme's "Caged Heat" is awfully experimental. It features extensive dream sequences and some very thinly veiled subtext about feminism and sexuality. And yet even a film this willing to play with convention is still beholden to the evil warden syndrome. (It's also beholden to the "women in prison tend to shower a lot syndrome" too, but that's a conversation for another time.) Barbara Steele's Superintendent McQueen even looks sinister with her schoolmarm clothes, slicked back hair, big glasses, and cold scowl. Slowly prowling the halls in her mechanized wheelchair, McQueen's repressed, robotic demeanor stands in contrast with the sensual, free-spirited inmates. And, of course, she's not to be trifled with -- "We punish here as well as correct," she warns. Though McQueen doesn't win the award for most depraved prison employee -- that would be the prison medical director who sedates his patients then molests them -- she's no saint, either. She tacitly condones his bad behavior by authorizing the doctor's use of electro-shock therapy in order to sedate an agitated general population. Her only concern? Making sure he gets the women to sign the release forms before he turns them into vegetables. Experiments are well and good, but you've got to be covered in case they go bad, the same way you'd make an experimental women-in-prison film with lots of shower scenes. 
Eddie Albert as Warden Hazen "The Longest Yard" (1974) It is a curious fact of prison movies, particularly those of the variety featuring corrupt or sadistic wardens, that they make us root for the criminals who make up the villains of just about every other movie involving cops and crooks. Consider "The Longest Yard," the story of a football game between the prisoners and guards at a Florida jailhouse. Both sides play dirty, but we root for the cons. Why? Because the cons break the rules, but they do it for the right reasons. The guards cheat on the orders of their boss, Warden Hazen, who takes so much pride in his prison's semi-pro football team he can't bear to see them lose at the hands of the inmates. So he threatens their captain, former pro Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds), with an extended sentence if he doesn't throw the game. (He's previously issued his second-in-command a similar ultimatum: win this season's championship or look for a new job.) So, yes, Crewe might lead the "Mean Machine" by sending one guy to the hospital with back-to-back intentional throws at his groin -- but only in retaliation for the guards' own sneaky moves. They cheat with integrity. 
Patrick McGoohan as Warden "Escape From Alcatraz" (1979) Patrick McGoohan plays the evil Warden with icy fastidiousness. A stickler for personal grooming, he flicks out his gleaming nail clipper while speaking with Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood), the high IQ inmate who will mastermind the only escape from Alcatraz prison. Stalking around his office with a ramrod posture and daggers in his eyes, McGoohan is a frightening vision of bureaucratic amorality. He over-enunciates every word, snapping his jaw shut with military precision before harassing a pet bird in its cage. That this blunt metaphor is effective is a tribute to McGoohan's controlled ferocity. He is the antagonist in Don Siegel's otherwise austere drama, a film more concerned with the process of escaping than the escape itself. Siegel spends as much time attending to dirt disposal as the Warden does on his well-manicured fingernails. Without McGoohan's juicy performance, "Escape From Alcatraz" would be as static as Bresson's sublime prison movie, "A Man Escaped." And despite the fact that Warden is clearly a dramatic construction doesn't detract from his power, for whether he's withdrawing paints from an aging artist or stamping on a memorial flower, McGoohan imbues him with an unforgettably soulless menace. 
Donald Sutherland as Warden Drumgoole "Lock Up" (1989) I'm sure real wardens have better things to do than to bug the shit out of the one prisoner in their jail they don't like. Thankfully, Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) from "Lock Up" is not a real warden. If he was, he'd have responsibilities at Gateway Prison — filing paperwork, staff sensitivity training, meetings with state officials, requisitioning funds, and so on. Instead, Drumgoole ignores all of these things in order to focus his attention on Sylvester Stallone's Frank Leone. Apparently, he holds a grudge against Leone for escaping a previous prison he worked at, exposing his shady penitentiary practices, and thus costing him his job. By way of payback, Drumgoole has Leone transferred to Gateway, where he prolongs his delousing treatment to a dangerous degree, cruelly cutting short his conjugal visits just as he's about to get lucky and even stands outside his cell all night long, banging on the bars so the guy can't sleep. Again, I'm not an expert, but if this is how Drumgoole behaved the first time around, then he deserved to be fired. If he stopped pointing fingers at others for a few minutes, he might realize that. 
Stephen Tobolowsky as Warden Holliday “Wedlock” (1991) This high-concept, no-budget gem from “Alligator” auteur Lewis Teague places bespectacled character actor Stephen Tobolowsky as the warden of Camp Holliday, a privately run prison established "sometime in the future." Warden Holliday is a meek fellow fond of flower pruning, but he also invented a collar that blows off prisoners' heads. The inmates are anonymously assigned a partner, and if either strays 100 yards from the facility, kaboom! This ingeniously sadistic system turns the condemned into guards, as any individual's escape marks another's doom. Enter electronics expert Frank Warren (Rutger Hauer), whose fiancé Noelle (a manic Joan Chen) betrayed him after a diamond heist. He took multiple slugs to the chest, but cleverly hid the rocks before his near-demise (and arrest). Hauer is remarkably likable here, shedding his usual stoic robot act for a Z-grade Cary Grant wit, the perfect foil to Tobolowsky's smarmy uptight intellectual. Warden Holliday is hell-bent on finding the stones, and employs his dry humor ("all you non-conformists are alike") and cruelty (his version of "the hole" is underwater) in an attempt to crack him. Needless to say, soon after Holliday's "no one has ever escaped" routine, Frank is off to the races with a lithe Mimi Rogers in tow. 
Ho Ka-Kui as Warden Sugiyama "Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki" (1991) A lot of movie wardens could be described as "monstrous," but Warden Sugiyama is the only literal monster on our list. He's the head of a horrific prison in the far-flung year 2001, in a dystopian future where "capitalistic countries have privatized all government organizations. Prisons, like car parks, have become franchised businesses." His prison is less a car park, and more an opium den; he runs a heroin processing plant right out of the jail. And for his final confrontation with the heroic prisoner Riki (Fan Siu-Wong), he transforms from a shrimpy bureaucrat into a gigantic, rippling brute with a Cro-Magnon brow and fearsome fangs. "The warden of any prison has to be the very best in kung fu!" he declares before turning into the Incredible Hulk if the Incredible Hulk were a bald Asian guy. Just how mean is Sugiyama? When he arrives at the prison, he's so displeased with the red carpet that's been laid out for him that he finds the inmate responsible, criticizes his eyesight, then stabs one of his eyes out. Sugiyama's so brutal that Riki -- a man who casually vivisects his opponents with his bare hands – is outraged enough by his behavior to get on his high horse and declare "Enough! We're human beings!" Look, Riki may punch a guy's jaw so hard that it erupts through the top of his skull, but he didn't rip out a guy's eyeball. Oh wait, he did that too. Never mind. 
Kurtwood Smith as Prison Director Poe “Fortress” (1993) Fear the Intestinator! In Stuart Gordon's richly drawn dystopia, the U.S. has instituted a one child policy and handed its prison system over to private enterprise, led by the Men-Tel Corporation. Christopher Lambert's Brennick lands in their clink after failing to spirit his pregnant wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) across the border into Mexico, following the death of their first child. Prison Director Poe (Kurtwood Smith, “That ’70s Show”) is the calm hand that controls the mind-control machinery of the prison. His first weapon is the Intestinator, a devious device shoved into the inmates' digestive system, and activated to inflict varying levels of pain. At its max, it explodes their guts onto the stainless steel walls. Poe also has access to their dreams, beamed into a bank of video screens, in an attempt to outlaw desire and instill obedience. Poe shows an unnatural interest in their sexual fantasies, his pasty white face shoved into an extreme close-up as his neutered personality marvels at the wonders of the physical world. 
Michael Lerner as The Warden “No Escape” (1994) It's the year 2022, and the prison system is run by private corporations for fun and profit. The corpulently sweaty warden (Michael Lerner) of the Leviticus prison has a secret: he dumps his most undesirable inmates onto an island, Absolom, and has them fight to the death. That's just what wealthy industrialists do. His only mistake was sending former Special Forces Captain J.T. Robbins (a jittery Ray Liotta) into the battleground and telling him that there is "no possibility of escape." That's always a bad move. Robbins soon assumes a leadership position with the Insiders, the civilized segment of the island administered by a subdued Lance Henriksen. They're engaged in constant battle with the Outsiders, whose S&M gear is straight out of “The Road Warrior.” They're led by the wisecracking Walter Marek (Stuart Wilson), who joshingly claims to have removed all the heads of state, and then dumps a bag of human appendages on the ground. The Warden views all the carnage from the privacy of his office, nervously tittering when a major attack is about to take place. Voyeuristic pleasure doesn't last forever, alas, and he is soon thrust into the bloody "entertainment" he created. 
Bob Gunton as Warden Norton "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) Warden Norton tells his prisoners that he believes in two things: discipline and the Bible. Those who've seen "The Shawshank Redemption" know that the warden believes in a third thing – money – and he acquires it through the exploitation of his other two principles. Once Norton learns of inmate Andy Dufresne's (Tim Robbins) aptitude at accounting, he establishes an "Inside Out" program at Shawshank, which put his cons to use on public works projects, ostensibly to further their rehabilitation, but actually serves as a means to embezzle the money the program brings in. Director Frank Darabont cleverly visualizes the way the corrupt Norton, who is often seen sporting a cross pin on his lapel, uses religion as a disguise for sin: the office safe where he keeps his cooked books is hidden behind an embroidered picture of a line of scripture (it reads "His judgement cometh, and that right soon"). The warden's hypocrisy extends to his ultimate fate, when he performs an act upon himself that no disciplined Bible reader would do in the face of deserved punishment. 
James Gandolfini as Colonel Winter "The Last Castle" (2001) Movie wardens always have these great office windows that they can use to keep careful watch on the yard and the convicts below. "The Last Castle"'s Col. Winter loves to stand by his and glower, and as his feud with inmate Eugene Irwin (Robert Redford) escalates, he is frequently found gazing outward, observing his enemy and plotting his next move. The difference between Winter and Irwin, a former lieutenant general, is that Irwin stands with his men, leading by example, while Winter stands above his, leading through intimidation. The film had the misfortune of winding up with a release date just a month after September 11th, when a story about questioning authority – particularly military authority – felt drastically out of step with the national mood. Ironically, "The Last Castle" now reads as a perfect critique of the foreign policy mess that followed, with Col. Winter and his lack of personal battlefield experience, poor planning, and questionable decision-making playing the role of the Bush Administration. Not surprisingly, the film's most meaningful gesture comes when they rioting inmates get their hands on an enormous catapult – don't ask me how – and launch a rock through Winter's precious office window, disrupting his seemingly untouchable sanctuary. 
Joan Allen as Warden Hennessey “Death Race” (2008) Paul W.S Anderson adapts “Death Race 2000” (1975) by shrinking it. Instead of a cross-country bloodbath, Anderson relocates it to a jail, where desperate inmates battle to win their freedom. It's 2012, and another economic collapse leads to a spike in crime and (again) the privatization of the prison system. To make money, Terminal Island has invented the Death Race, a PPV event where prisoners equip cars with heavy artillery and annihilate each other for high ratings. Five victories earn freedom, but Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) ensures that doesn't happen, sabotaging cars and weapons with barely suppressed glee. An uptick in viewers justifies any act of brutality. Her sadism is soft-spoken, in a low, husky tone that mesmerizes guards and inmates alike. After she disposes of the most popular driver, Frankenstein, she brings in Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) to don his mask, unwilling to lose his fans. Ames is played by Statham with his usual sarcastic bravado, his crooked smirk slashing through the competition. He soon realizes he's destined for Hennessey's meat grinder, and threatens to quit. Allen is unflappable. Her voice hardly rises above a whisper, but it's the most violent weapon in the movie.
