Animal Factory (film): Despite a stellar cast, this movie just misses the mark

I was having a rather heated conversation with a friend the other day about Edward Furlong and his fall from grace in Hollywood. He was yet another "child" star that couldn't handle the rigors of the industry and fell into a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol that took its toll on his career and basically ended it. I was saying that I never though he was a very good actor and that he was put into that position because he looked the part. The industry was pining for a new Leonardo and well, Furlong was not that. I don't think Leo is a good actor either and things got heated when my friend and I were discussing a fantastic film called American History X.

I said that the other Edward in Edward Norton was the reason why "X" was a good film and you could have subbed almost anyone into Furlong's role and it still would have worked. Take away Norton though and the film falls apart. I believe I am correct about this.

This discussion resulted in me having a look to see what else Furlong had been in other than T2 of course, and I discovered a film that basically nobody went to go see called Animal Factory. I had never heard of it and with good reason I suppose. Despite having a massive cast including Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Arnold the film absolutely bombed pulling in less than $50,000 before being pulled from theaters.

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The story here is that a 21 year-old Ron Decker gets the book thrown at him for marijuana possession and he gets a 5 year sentence because the politically motivated district attorney is deciding to be tough on drug crime. The justification for giving Ron a massive sentence is because he comes from a family of means and to not give him a tough sentence would send the message that drug-sentences are only for the poor, not for wealthy families. Ron doesn't really take his sentence seriously even though he ends up in San Quentin prison, which is well-known for being a really tough prison. He is small in stature, and young and "pretty" by prison standards.

By some twists that don't really make a lot of sense he ends up being under the protection of prison inmate "leader" Earl Copen, who is played by Willem Dafoe. Earl's crew consists of a bunch of heavys as well, including the man who never saw a prison film he didn't like in Danny Trejo.

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Having never been to prison myself, I can not attest to any of the things portrayed in this film as being even remotely true but it appears as though certain connected prisoners are given a lot of freedoms inside the walls and Earl is basically the boss of everyone, for some reason.

Earl helps out Ron in a lot of ways, but when Ron's sentence is upheld, the notion of the two of them breaking out together gets put together as a plan and this is where I have one of my major problems with the film: The breakout is so simplistic that it is incredibly unrealistic that it would ever work. Remember Shawshank Redemption? Well that breakout was something that was really worth believing in. It took years and a lot of patience and secrecy on the part of Andy Dufrane. This breakout is something that Earl and Ron throw together in a couple of days and they tell just about everyone, including several of the guards, about it. It's just too impractical.

Other issues that I have with the film is the idea that a character played by Willem Dafoe would ever be in charge in a prison. He's not a made man mobster or anything and he is absurdly small. He's 5 foot 7 and weighs in at less than 160 lbs. I was that large when I was a freshman in high school. Regardless of how many friends you make in prison, this isn't exactly someone that would inspire fear from the other inmates.

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He was believable as Green Goblin in Spiderman because he had technology on his side but just a dude in a shirt with a knife made out of a toothbrush? Nah, I'm not scared of that guy and I'm not even very big. The giants that are featured in this film would walk right over 3 of him.

My personal biases about something I know very little about (the politics of prison life) aside, the film is actually quite boring in that the film focuses quite heavily on how the prisoners find a way to get along with the guards and while that might have been the intention all along - to do something different in regards to prison films - it just doesn't make for very good cinema.

Should I watch it?

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much going into this film and was still let down. I made it all the way through only because I was having a spell of insomnia and my phone was in the other room. Had it not been for these two factors, I would have turned it off early. I think there is a reason why they never attempted a widespread release of this film, because they knew it wouldn't be worth the distribution costs. Furlong shows his mediocrity in this film though and to a degree that was kind of my objective in the first place. Once again, this film would have been the same had we substituted anyone else into that role.

I would pass on this one. Go watch Animal FARM or even Animal HOUSE instead

_{this film can be legally streamed on Peacock and rented on just about any other service that exists}