Lock Up (1989)
Lock Up is a 1989 American prison action film directed by John Flynn. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, Tom Sizemore, and John Amos. It was released in the United States on August 4, 1989. Stallone later said it was “Not a film that was produced and performed with enough maturity to really make a significant impact on the audience or my career. And that’s the truth”. Lock Up grossed $22.1 million on a budget of $24 million.
Plot.
Frank Leone, a mechanic in Hoboken, New Jersey, is a model prisoner nearing the end of his sentence in Norwood, a low-security prison. He occasionally spends time outside prison on furlough fixing cars, playing football and seeing his girlfriend Melissa. While sleeping in his cell, guards arrive and forcibly take Leone to the brutal maximum-security Gateway Prison run by Warden Drumgoole. Drumgoole explains that he arranged this in retaliation for an incident in which Leone escaped from Drumgoole’s previous post, Treadmore Prison, and informed the press about Drumgoole’s treatment of his prisoners, after Drumgoole refused to allow Leone a one-hour furlough to visit his dying mentor. Not only did this incident result in five years in minimum security being added to Leone’s sentence, but in Drumgoole’s transfer to Gateway, a negative mark on his job record. Leone is mistreated by the guards and by a dominant inmate, Chink Weber, who acts as a trusty for Drumgoole. Leone befriends fellow prisoners Dallas, Eclipse, and First-Base, and shows them how he deals with the hardship of prison.
The foursome refurbish a Ford Mustang in the prison shop, which Eclipse nicknames “Maybelline”. Leone explains to Eclipse that he was sent to prison for taking the law into his own hands when he avenged an attack on his mentor. After Leone reluctantly allows First-Base to start the car, First-Base drives the Mustang out of the garage and into the prison yard. Afterward, Drumgoole makes Leone and his friends watch as other inmates destroy the car. Leone is sent to solitary confinement for six weeks and tortured by the guards. However, the guards’ captain, Meissner, and one other guard, Braden, become so disgusted with the sadism of the warden and his toadies that Meissner orders it stopped and releases Leone from confinement.
Aiming to force Leone to snap and compromise his position, the warden has Chink Weber kill First-Base in the gym. Enraged, Leone attacks Chink, rendering him helpless, but before he kills him, he relents, knowing that committing such an act is precisely what Drumgoole wants. Seizing this opportunity, one of Chink’s goons impales Leone from behind with a shank. As Leone recovers in the prison infirmary, another prisoner tells him that he has been hired to rape and murder Melissa.
That night, Leone attempts his escape with Dallas to try and save Melissa, however Dallas lures him to a dead end, where they are captured by Drumgoole and his guards, among them, the one who posed as the prisoner who claimed he would rape Melissa. It is revealed that Drumgoole arranged this to provoke Leone into attempting an escape, in order to have a mandatory 10-year sentence imposed upon him, and convinced Dallas to assist him in his plan in exchange for an early release, though Drumgoole reneges on this after Leone’s capture. Drumgoole leaves the two inmates to be beaten by the guards, but Dallas, knowing the other prisoners would kill him after setting up Leone, apologizes to Leone and electrocutes himself and officer Manly to help Leone escape.