Film Review: Midnight Express (1978)

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

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

Today, even those viewers unlikely to call themselves “woke” or “politically correct” would hardly fail to notice 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 protagonists and his fair-skinned prison mates. Stone in his “Oscar”-awarded script even finds opportunity to give protagonist a raging sermon during which he would address the Turks in ways that could be interpreted as hate speech. It’s not surprising that, many years later, Hayes expressed the regret about the film that had strayed much from his book (including the manner of his escape), and those regrets were followed 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 of that the film made him into some sort of heroic figure, and the main issue became brutality of Turkish prisons - subject covered in more effective and authentic way by Turkish director and escaped prisoner Yilmaz Güney in his film Duvar made few years later.

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

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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