Prison yards contain a multitude of characters, but prison movies tend to focus on the same handful of archetypes: The badass that nobody dares to mess with, the tougher-than-he-looks newcomer who teaches everyone a lesson after they foolishly think they can mess with him, or the charismatic leader who gets the cell block to see past their differences and work together. You don’t often see movies centered around the guy who easily can be messed with and becomes everyone else’s punching bag while his own life gets worse and worse.
But prisons are filled with those guys who never make their way onto a movie screen, and Cal McMau’s directorial debut “Wasteman” centers around one of them. Taylor (David Jonsson) isn’t anybody’s worst nightmare or fearless leader. He’s a soft-spoken man whose eyes are filled with regret and whose posture suggests a deep desire to just be invisible. He desperately wants some kind of relationship with his young son on the outside, but any time he manages to place a call to his kid’s mother, he’s quickly dismissed and asked not to contact her again because his son “doesn’t know” him.
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The only thing that occasionally dulls his pain is opioid use, as the British prison has a thriving drug-trading industry involving a variety of goods and services. It gets him through the day, but he’s all too happy to walk away from it when he’s presented with an opportunity for early parole (due to issues with prison overcrowding, rather than any of his own behavior). The chance to get his life back is nothing short of a godsend, but Taylor is warned that his last months need to be entirely mistake-free.
That shouldn’t be a problem, as Taylor would never be mistaken for a troublemaker. But he is soon assigned a new cellmate, Dee (Tom Blyth), who is looking to deal drugs and make a name for himself. Overflowing with machismo and misplaced aggression, he quickly assumes that Taylor is someone who can be broken and molded into an asset for himself. He seems like he might have heard the old adage that you need to find the biggest guy in the yard and beat him up on your first day in prison, but thought that going after the smallest and weakest guy would work just as well.
Their relationship is toxic from the get-go, painting a clear portrait of the ways that hard drugs can take a man’s soul and the violent personas that prisoners end up wearing as disguises without even realizing that they’ve changed. Taylor’s entire incarceration has revolved around keeping the peace and fitting in, but his new circumstances force him to consider how far he’s willing to push his own boundaries in order to survive.
The film alternates between cinematographer Lorenzo Levrini’s carefully composed shots, which often reflect Taylor’s loneliness and regret with cool colored lighting and deep shadows, and vertical phone camera footage of impromptu prison fights. But by switching between found footage and something more traditional without committing to either extreme, “Wasteman” finds itself in an unpleasant middle ground that puts a significant ceiling on its visual storytelling potential. And while much of the film’s message revolves around the senselessness and brutality of prison violence — a point that nobody could possibly miss — McMau and Levrini often lean too heavily on shaky camerawork during their fight scenes, creating their (presumably) desired sense of chaos at the expense of imagery that would give us a clearer picture of the actions they’re condemning.
Amid all the barbarity for barbarity’s sake, Jonsson carries the film with a deep well of unspoken regret. There’s an innocence that shines through all of his actions, showing that even a man who has spent most of his adult life incarcerated doesn’t have to let it change his priorities. Blyth provides a fitting foil to Jonsson’s softness with his endless spring of ruthless aggression, forcing Taylor’s primal survival instincts to butt against his more civilized sense that there has to be something more for him in this world. It’s the kind of high level character work that illustrates why Jonsson is one of the most exciting actors of our time. He simply deserved a better movie to showcase this particular character.
Grade: C+
“Wasteman” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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