Midnight Express

Alan Parker, UK, 1978, 120 minutes

Based on the book of the same title by Billy Hayes and William Hoffer, this is perhaps Parker's most impressive work. With a strong script by Oliver Stone and incredibly mature performances from a relatively unknown cast, Midnight Express is perhaps Britain's most successful answer to Hollywood cinema. The perfect use of all the formulae for audience manipulation, including the accurate choice of a true story as the subject of the film, result into the creation of one of the most compelling political thrillers in the whole of cinematic history.

Billy Hayes (superbly played by Brad Davis) is a young American whose attempt to smuggle drugs costs him life imprisonment in a Turkish jail. After several appeals to the Turkish authorities and the minimal support from the Americans had proved futile, Hayes descends into hell, being continuosly subjected to physical and psychological mortification. On the threshold of insanity he decides to escape, a task which seems impossible to realise.

Parker depicts magnificently the claustrophobic and irrational world of the prison increased by the misanthropy and xenophobia of the authorities. This nightmarish experience as a consequence of an act of ignorance and naïaut;vety haunts the audience from the moment Hayes is incarcerated until the last breathless sequences of his struggle to escape. The purely instinctual battle for survival achieves here its most powerful expression as the "call of the wild" in Hayes gives him the final push to freedom. Criticised for the fact that its violent scenes were received with enthusiasm among audiences worldwide, and for containing racist hints, Midnight Express is indeed controversial at points. Brilliant in its "impression management" techniques, dodgy in the treatment of its heroes.

Review by Spiros Gangas
Taken from EUFS Programme 1992-93