Review: Two prisoners perfect a delicate dance of appeasement and self-interest in 'Wasteman'

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Like the milieu in which they’re set, prison movies can be terribly constricting.Often focusing on well-worn themes of masculinity, regret and redemption, they feature (and sometimes indulge) rough-hewn portrayals of tortured characters suffering through physical and emotional tumult.

Inherently compelling but also a shade predictable, the genre promises a tantalizing glimpse at a terrifyingly macho world — one that most of us are fortunate not to know firsthand.Cal McMau’s feature directorial debut hardly reinvents the formula, but it does remind audiences what remains so sturdy about the premise of an ordinary man trying to stay alive behind bars.And thanks to the latest impressive turn from rising star David Jonsson, “Wasteman” even finds a few new notes to play within a familiar stark melody.Jonsson is Taylor, who has been serving 13 years in a U.K.

prison for a drug deal that went tragically wrong, leading to an accidental death.Soft-spoken and overly accommodating, the young man mostly wants to avoid trouble, allowing himself to be bullied by cell-block thugs Paul (Alex Hassell) and Gaz (Corin Silva) while offering to cut their hair in exchange for the pills that fuel his addiction.

Taylor has learned to go along to get along, existing in a zombie-like state from the perpetual high he chases.But Taylor’s stasis is interrupted by the news that he may be granted early parole.(The overstuffed U.K.

penal system needs to shed nonviolent prisoners to make room for dangerous offenders.) Longing to reconnect with his estranged teenage son Adam (Cole Martin), Taylor can see the light at the end of the tunnel — until the arrival of Dee, his new cellmate.Movies We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.Played by a snarling, coiled Tom Blyth, Dee swaggers w...