Gulag Reviews

A lightweight but well-produced entry in the venerable foreign-prisons-are-hell genre, this TV movie boasts a strong supporting performance from Malcolm McDowell, but suffers from a queasily patriotic streak. Handsome, boy-scoutish David Keith is perfectly cast as Mickey Almon, a golden boy athlete whose need to play the big shot ends him up in a Soviet prison camp. Although Dan Gordon's script has plenty of fun disabusing Mickey of the notion that he's got all sorts of inalienable rights as an American abroad, the film ultimately comes off as a piece of Cold War propaganda. Nevertheless, director Roger Young displays a sure hand with the scenes of prison brutality, revenge, and camaraderie. The sequences depicting a furious wager over who can produce the most slipshod Soviet mittens in an hour proves just as gripping as the inevitable but well-staged escape-attempt scenes. The plot allows the filmmakers to work in all sorts of details about the differing conditions faced by domestic dissidents and foreign enemies in the Soviet prison system. And McDowell, as a foreign-intelligence bureaucrat who gets snagged during a midlife-crisis stab at being a field agent, oozes bitterness and unexpected humanity with flair. If the film ultimately pales in comparison to such stylish and/or epic efforts as Bridge on the River Kwai, Papillon, and Midnight Express, it's still got enough of its own personality to stand proud.