"Director Cal McMau, working from a script by Hunter Andrews & Eoin Doran, opens his film with a tone-setting bit of violence as we see a prison beatdown through what looks like a phone recording from a fellow inmate. The guys who run the UK prison that this film will never leave don't take kindly to being double-crossed and they brutally beat a man, ending the attack by slamming a TV on his head."
"This means Taylor (Jonsson) is going to need a new cellmate, who comes in the form of Dee (Blyth, having a hell of a year with " Plainclothes " from Sundance and Claire Denis' "The Fence," also at TIFF). Taylor has survived this lawless place by disappearing, quietly doing favors for the power players as he numbs himself with drugs. Dee threatens that reality at the precise wrong time as Taylor learns that he may get early parole, possibly even reconnecting with the son he's never known. For the first time in years, maybe ever, Taylor allows himself to hope,"
Wasteman is an intense, unforgiving prison drama anchored by a searing lead performance from David Jonsson and a complementary turn from Tom Blyth. Cal McMau directs a taut story built from a script by Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran, opening with brutal, tone-setting violence that establishes the film's lawless world. Jonsson's Taylor survives by disappearing and doing favors while numbing himself with drugs; Blyth's Dee disrupts that fragile survival just as parole and a possible reconnection with an unknown son present a sliver of hope. The film's relative simplicity allows deep character work within confined spaces, even as the surrounding plot occasionally falters.
Read at Roger Ebert
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