Borstal Boy

Ireland 2000, 98 minutes
Dir. Peter Sheridan
Rating: [M]
Genres: Drama / Prison, Youth, LGBT

Topics: Period 1940s.

Feat. Shawn Hatosy, Danny Dyer, Michael York

Aroview: Well-mannered adaptation of playwright Brendan Behan's classic memoir of being sent to a youth prison in WW2 England after being caught with IRA explosives enroute to a bombing.

Although sympathetically cast, this fudges the essentials of Behan's emerging personality cocktail of violent conviction, creativity, self-destruction and 'rebel charm', with perhaps only his conflicted homosexuality getting a substantial treatment.