Not worth the hype, a script full of shortcuts

Rating: 3/10 (1 June 2016)

Stephen King is of course, a gifted storyteller. Maybe this might not be his most personal writing, if you want to read a very insightful book on prison detention and the atrocities and misconducts that exist, read the Star Rover, it is fantastic.
To me, this is filled with far too many shortcuts, basically everything is in hand for Dusfrene to escape. The perfect location, the cell on the extremity of the facility floor, yet we can't really see where the foundation leads to, apparently it leads into the pipelines. Also the great timing, the fact that he manages to work out taxes, bills, finances for a 100 person, and in charge of the library, and with a rock hammer that he trades from Red, he breaches a cement wall. I don't get how any of this is realistic - since it's a King's series, might as well turn into a fantasy. But it's incoherent, lacks coherent flow, it intends to empathy with cons who really seem to be very friendly people (sort of), and might be innocent. I'm not sure these people are all quite recommendable and the camaraderie between detainees necessary - it is certainly not the same nature between workers that are part of a union. I fail to understand how a movie can go two hours and then in a span of ten minutes, retrace ten years of escape planning without giving us any hints on where Dusfrene will strike.
The scenes where he is revealed that a mobster murdered his wife and her lover makes no sense, it doesn't work, I don't understand it - the scene when he plays opera is tacky - again, this movie reaches. And then of course, a post-modern ending to a movie that is set in the 60s, where two guys meet on the beach, Dusfrene treating a beat up boat. Again, the development reaches, it is just a series of shortcuts that arrange the directors in order to get through it by just being lazy.
The performances are dull, there is hardly any real focus, any real acting, it doesn't focus enough on the characters, it moves too fast.
This movie just doesn't work.