Symmetry

Here we have a tedious, monotonous prison drama that doesn’t have a single interesting thing to contribute to this well-worn genre. The story revolves around Lukasz (Arek Detmer), an innocent man wrongly imprisoned for assaulting an old lady. He is quickly placed into a crowded cell with four other inmates, and as the movie progresses, we begin to learn about the circumstances that brought each of them to this place. Director Konrad Niewolski imbues the film with an intriguing sense of style that echoes no less than Kubrick, but fails to offer us a compelling storyline or even interesting characters. Lukasz is particularly guilty of the latter, as he doesn’t even seem to care that he’s been thrown into jail for a crime he presumably didn’t commit. Niewolski, who also wrote the script, peppers the dialogue with prison slang that’s virtually impossible to penetrate – and as a result, a lot of the film’s mini-dramas become exceedingly difficult to follow. Finally, towards the end, Niewolski starts fleshing out some of the characters, but it’s far too late to care by then.

** out of ****