Film Review: Midnight Express (1978)

Film Review: Midnight Express (1978) | Ecency

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While some films don't age very well, it is still difficult to imagine that such a thing could happen to films that were once great commercial hits, spawning numerous pop culture references (like the line of dialogue in Airplane!), winning over critics and even prestigious awards, including three Oscars. It is even more difficult to imagine that many of their creators would later do all in their power to distance themselves from that work. One such rare example is Midnight Express, the 1977 prison drama directed by Alan Parker.

The script, written by Oliver Stone, is based on the autobiographical book by Billy Hayes. The plot begins with Hayes (played by Brad Davis), a young American who, while visiting Turkey, decided to earn some extra money by buying a kilo of cheap hashish and trying to smuggle it out of the country. This proves to be a bad idea because he is arrested at the airport. After initially cooperating with authorities, Hayes gets an even worse idea: to escape. As a result, Hayes is sentenced to four years in prison, which prove to be very hard for a young man, being subjected to harsh conditions, beatings and mistreatment from his first night behind bars. As a foreigner, Hayes is at the bottom of the prison hierarchy and suffers at the hands of prisoners and guards alike, especially the brutal head guard Hamidou (played by Paul L. Smith). The only people Hayes can rely on are three prisoners from Western countries who share the same predicament and who devise a plan to end it by prison escape. Hayes, at first, doesn't want the risk, but shortly before his scheduled release his sentence is overturned on the prosecution's appeal and he receives a new sentence of thirty years. With his physical and mental health already affected by years of abuse, Hayes finally sees that escape is the only option.

Today, even those viewers unlikely to call themselves "woke" or "politically correct" would hardly fail to notice the strong flavour of racism in Midnight Express. All Turkish characters in this film are portrayed as corrupt, depraved or conspiring to make life miserable for the protagonist and his fair-skinned prison mates. Stone, in his Oscar-winning script, even finds an opportunity to give the protagonist a raging sermon during which he addresses the Turks in ways that could be interpreted as hate speech. It is not surprising that, many years later, Hayes expressed regret about the film that had strayed far from his book (including the manner of his escape), and those regrets were echoed by Stone and director Alan Parker. Hayes claimed that the purpose of his book was to warn other foreigners not to indulge in smuggling and similar crime; instead, the film made him into some sort of heroic figure, and the main issue became the brutality of Turkish prisons – a subject covered more effectively and authentically by Turkish director and escaped prisoner Yilmaz Güney in his film Duvar, made a few years later.

Regardless of its questionable content, Midnight Express, for the most part, provides audiences with a display of great filmmaking skills. This is especially the case in the beginning, when Parker succeeds in creating suspense in the smuggling scene despite the audience already knowing what fate awaits the protagonist. The film, however, stands on the shoulders of Brad Davis, who delivered one of the most memorable acting performances of 1970s cinema, displaying a broad range from arrogant young man at the beginning to pathetic wreck at the end. Davis's strong performance easily overshadowed all other actors except Paul L. Smith in the role of the protagonist's nemesis. That includes relatively well-known names like Randy Quaid and John Hurt as Hayes's prison friends, as well as Irene Miracle in the thankless role of Hayes's girlfriend, best remembered for a powerful but extremely awkward breast-flashing scene. Midnight Express, on the other hand, isn't helped by a somewhat abrupt and uncathartic ending. The same could be said of Giorgio Moroder's musical score, which at times sounds like it is trying to romanticise rather unromantic subjects. It is not that surprising that Midnight Express didn't leave as much of an impression as some similarly themed films, like the original version of Papillon or The Shawshank Redemption, did.

RATING: 5/10 (++)