[The following text was published in Pardo, the official daily of the Locarno Film Festival.]
After sporting drama Bang Bang (2024) and the gripping procedural Gangland (2025), genre wizard Vincent Grashaw is back at Locarno for the third consecutive year, this time with a propulsive prison saga full of heart and soul. Bruton is based on the incredible true story of Bryan Bruton, a small-time drug dealer and family man from Florida who was sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter. In prison, he seduced a female officer, spearheaded successful smuggling operations, and eventually, with his lover’s assistance, pulled off a daring escape together with another inmate, both disguised as guards. Caught hitching a ride in the backwoods, the pair were placed in solitary confinement. Until his release seven years later, in 2014, Bruton was shuttled between penitentiaries, often without visitation rights.
Powered by a sardonic first-person voiceover in the vein of Martin Scorsese, Bruton moves expertly between comic and dramatic registers. Emily the Criminal’s (2022) Theo Rossi portrays the title role with tremendous charm and wile, bowling over Maura Willis, his prison guard paramour – played with a touching vulnerability by Tammy Blanchard. By staying close to Bruton’s perspective, the film has viewers rooting for this regular Joe who finds ingenious ways of crawling out of a hole, only to then dig himself new ones.
Grashaw, also the film’s writer and editor, is completely in tune with the wildly entertaining material. Without minimising Bruton’s capacity for harm nor the gravity of his crimes, he taps into the indomitability of the man’s spirit in soul-crushing circumstances. A large part of this outlook derives from his love for his daughter Crystal (played by Kayden Tokarski and Alexandria Jane Arnold at different ages) – a relationship fleshed out with great care and emotional impact.
The dignity and generosity with which the film treats Bruton is extended to all the other inmates, a veritable Hawksian bunch in their infectious camaraderie, passion, and unity of purpose. Grashaw lays emphasis not on the sordid nature of life behind bars – difficult though it is – but on the lust for life teeming there. For almost half its runtime, Bruton feels like the gentlest prison movie ever made, with our man cruising through his term and romancing Maura over biscuits and steak. Even when things go south – and south, they go – Bruton continues to hope against hope that he’ll be back with Crystal one day. When their reunion eventually happens, it’s fireworks!
