The film opens with a brilliant sequence of sustained tension in which Billy, portrayed with great physical conviction by then-unknown television actor Brad Davis, straps the drugs around his midsection and then tries to make his way through the airport. Parker overwhelms the soundtrack with the thudding sound of Billy’s racing heart and fills the screen with sweaty close-ups that convey in no uncertain terms that Billy is in way over his head. The outcome is predetermined--Billy will be caught, arrested, and interned in a Turkish prison, otherwise there would be no film--but this in no way dilutes the raw-nerve-rattling intensity of the sequence, and when the worst is finally realized, it has that much more of a horrific impact.

The rest of the film takes place in a Turkish prison where Billy is sentenced to three years for his crime, which is later extended to a life sentence because the prosecutor (Kevork Malikyan) pushes the Turkish High Court in Ankara to overturn the earlier charge of possession in favor of smuggling. The prison in which Billy may spend the rest of his life is nightmare incarnate--an aging fortress of no color and no respite populated with prisoners of all nationalities and ages (from the elderly down to young children). It has dank hallways, iron-wrought torture rooms, and a dusty inner yard bleached by the hot sun. Inside Billy meets and befriends several other inmates, including a fiery American named Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid) and an eccentric Brit named Max (John Hurt). All of them are overseen by a hulking, nearly mute guard (Paul Smith) who relishes his sadistic power role; when he shoots a hard look at Billy’s father as his son is being dragged from the courtroom, it has a bone-chilling sense of finality to it.

If there is a narrative momentum in Midnight Express, it is a downward spiral, with Billy’s life in the hellish prison constantly devolving amidst brutality and a judicial system that seems intent on making an example of him by never letting him go, regardless of the efforts of his family and the government (all of which is left off-screen, as are any indications that Billy’s punishment might have been a result of the U.S. government’s pressure on countries like Turkey to stem the drug trade). It is in this regard that the film has been criticized for its unfair portrayal of Turkey, its justice system, and its people. Part of this is because everything is depicted through the eyes of Billy, who is young, privileged, and American (his name, although real, is just too perfect); thus, it should come as no surprise that the dark underside of a foreign culture would seem that much more alien and dispiriting. Parker emphasizes Billy’s alienation by allowing no subtitles when Turkish characters speak, which renders their dialogue little more than frightful jabbering (half the time they aren’t even speaking Turkish but rather Maltese because the film was shot in Malta and many of the actors were recruited there). It’s a risky choice and one that arguably does cast Turkey in an unnecessarily harsh light, yet it is decidedly effective in aligning us with Billy’s experience, which is the primary goal of the film.

The atmosphere of cruelty and degradation is lifted from time to time in the interactions between Billy and the other inmates; in particular, the trio he forms with Jimmy and Max creates an intriguing triangle of clashing personalities, with Jimmy constantly jittery and hot-tempered, Max resigned to his fate to the point of lethargy, and Billy just trying to make sense of what his life has become. Unfortunately, Parker’s attempt to offer temporary respite from the violence also leads to the film’s worst sequence, which depicts a romantic interlude between Billy and an imprisoned Swede named Erich (Norbert Weisser) that Billy chastely declines at the last moment. The idea that even heterosexual men might turn to each other for physical connection and intimacy inside the prison is certainly understandable (although it made the studio executives exceedingly nervous), but Parker shoots it with such dreamy soft-core schmaltz and Moroder’s rising music is so over the top that the sequence turns into an immediate parody of itself, especially when placed in counterpart to the rest of the film’s unrelieved viciousness.

At other points, though, Parker drives home the essence of experience with an unmatched intensity, particularly the sequence in which Billy finally loses his temper and lashes out against the prison snitch who enriches himself at the expense of Billy’s friends. Parker goes into aesthetic overdrive, depicting Billy’s unleashed violence as a slow-motion orgasmic release of pent-up anger and frustration, which works much better than the earlier courtroom sequence in which Billy is given the life sentence and he angrily lectures the prosecutor and the judges. His points have merit and Brad Davis’ delivery is powerful, but the words don’t sound like anything he would say. Instead, it makes Billy sound like a mouthpiece for screenwriter Oliver Stone’s indignation toward unjust systems, a recurring theme that would come to define his later films. Thus, Midnight Express falters most when it is trying too hard to make a point rather than engaging our primal cores in depicting the exhaustive and harrowing extremes of human endurance.

Copyright ©2009 James Kendrick

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