The Escapist is a film you hear. Leonard Cohen’s The Partisan introduces us to Frank (Brian Cox), a ‘lifer’ whose crime is never revealed and who, like Papillion (Steve McQueen in Papillon (1973)), yearns for freedom from the hyper-realistic world of his confinement. The muted palette and eerie lighting that is cast across the maze of cells, steamy shower rooms and steel staircases are enhanced by the careful attention director Rupert Wyatt has paid to the soundtrack. We never hear the outside world; we never hear any sounds that are not made by the rowdy cast of inmates or the impotent, cowardly and virtually silent prison guards who watch from the periphery. The result is intense claustrophobia – inexplicable screams, garbled voices over the tannoy, whistles and hoots – that is channelled into a complex story of incarceration, regret and human imagination.

Wyatt’s decision to focus on sound, as well as body language, is the first stage of a conscious departure from the conventions of the genre. The focus is not on the intricacies of the escape itself (though that plays a part), thus a new area of enquiry is unlocked – for the impetus of a prison break necessarily originates in the imagination. The Escapist has at its centre the aim of investigating the final thoughts of a dying man. Far from being a gimmick, this elevates the film into a structurally complex affair. Frank receives his first letter in fourteen years and discovers that his daughter, who was six when he was imprisoned, is now a twenty-one year old junkie. Brian Cox’s performance as a hardened criminal, whose life is suddenly given meaning, is communicated through his impatience, his long, hard stares when being contradicted, his tactility and his frustration. As the film progresses, we see Frank and his companions completing the stages of their escape and simultaneously, we see the events that take place before the escape that paradoxically lead to his death.

Although some of the cut-away shots that show the escapists crawling through tunnels are tacky and unnecessary, the rest of the film is visually impressive because ordinary locations such as the shower room, the laundry room and disused underground stations, are never contrasted with the outside world and subsequently take on a menacing surrealism. At times, it is as if the characters are in a science fiction movie; at others, the colour is so desaturated that the graininess of the film is magnified, akin to a sequence in a concentration camp. Clever use of light means that even whilst the characters are still in prison, sterility is avoided; in one scene, the primary light source is a homemade torch. Coupled with the graininess of 16mm, an air of textured masculinity pervades the film. There are no female characters, besides Frank’s daughter who appears in a photograph and as an illusion later on in the film, and what we can assume to be his wife, who cries in to a handkerchief and is gone.

But this lack of women does not detract from the softness of the film. Dominic Cooper is excellent as new-kid-on-the-block James Lacey, particularly when he is being pursued by the psychopathic Tony (Steven Mackintosh) who plays the perverted, vicious smack-head brother of the ward’s king Rizza (Damian Lewis). Rizza, red-headed and well-spoken, is less chilling than his brother and his ability to get away with practically anything puts him above the already twisted laws of the prison, and subsequently above the interest or sympathies of the audience. Characters such as Brodie (Liam Cunningham) – an ex-sewage worker and logistical genius – and Viv Baptista (Seu Jorge) who supplies the inmates’ drug habits are minor and their speech occasionally descends into cliché, but they are not without weaknesses and rarely, if ever, become flat characters that act only for the sake of the story.

The Escapist is a thorough, refreshing examination of masculinity, incarceration and the search for freedom. The tempo of the story is well judged, if sometimes hampered by predictable ‘witty repartee’ between the characters. Wyatt transcends the genre by allowing the audience to sit inside the imagination of a hardened criminal: it turns out to be a stunning landscape, full of violence, desperation and fear, tempered by moments of beauty.