Midnight Express
1978 · Directed by Alan Parker
Original language: English
- drama
- crime
The story
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
What it’s like
Gritty, sweat-soaked realism shot in grainy 1970s film stock, with harsh fluorescent glare in airport corridors, sickly yellow-brown light in cramped Turkish prison cells, and claustrophobic handheld framing that keeps the walls pressing in. Sound is dominated by clanging doors, shouted orders and echoing stone corridors, punctuated by Giorgio Moroder's pulsing synthesizer score, which turns the tension into something almost hypnotic. The vibe is bleak, feverish and punishing, a slow-burning dread that builds toward a few sudden eruptions of brutal violence, including a notorious scene of sadistic cruelty that lands with real force. Pacing is relentless in its middle stretch, with long stretches of confinement broken by desperate bursts of hope and betrayal, and the emotional arc follows a young American man stripped of his dignity and slowly hardening as he tries to survive. This is intense, graphic in places, and far from gentle, with prison brutality, nudity and drug-related violence. It suits viewers who want a hard, unflinching prison drama and are comfortable with dark, harrowing material.
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