Wasteman review – Brit prison drama is as lethal and nasty as a sharpened toothbrush

. UK edition

David Jonsson and Tom Blyth in Wasteman.
Insider dealing … David Jonsson and Tom Blyth in Wasteman. Photograph: Courtesy of Lionsgate UK

Some of the tropes are familiar, but this brutally violent and gripping film sidesteps the cliches with committed acting and fierce storytelling punch

Rising stars David Jonsson and Tom Blyth bring A-game performances for this brutally violent, gripping British prison movie, as lethal and nasty as a sharpened toothbrush. Screenwriters Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran and director Cal McMau are feature first-timers, creating a film that is a deserved Bafta nominee in the outstanding British debut category. Some of the tropes are familiar, but this film sidesteps the cliches with the committed acting and fierce storytelling punch.

The scene is an overcrowded jail (filmed in Shepton Mallet) whose ugly savagery and chaos we periodically see through the smartphone screen of someone gleefully filming it – the kind of jail which has forced the government’s policy of early prisoner release to take pressure off the system. Jonsson (from TV’s Industry) is Taylor, a shamblingly submissive and timid drug addict, who can hardly believe that this new arrangement means he is due for parole in a fortnight; he is pathetically excited at the thought of seeing his teenage son.

But as the day of freedom draws near, he is given a new cellmate, Dee, played by Blyth, a violent, toxically charismatic alpha-dog who wants to take over the prison’s drug sales, coordinating a sophisticated system of drone delivery – to the glowering resentment of the existing top Gs Paul (Alex Hassell) and Gaz (Corin Silva). Instantly, parasitical predator Dee makes Taylor his pet and his quaveringly scared ally in the forthcoming inevitable violent confrontation with Paul and Gaz.

With instinctive cunning, Dee sees how he can use Taylor’s yearning to see his boy as a way of putting him in his debt. Sometime soon, Dee will ask Taylor to do something for him which could seriously imperil his parole. The performances of Jonsson and Blyth are fierce and overwhelmingly convincing.

• Wasteman is out on 20 February in the UK and on 17 April in the US.