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Civil Brand

2003, Movie, R, 95 mins

Civil Brand: Review

CIVIL BRAND
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"Welcome to the plantation, Sister Francis," says one hardened inmate of the Whitehead Correctional Facility for Women to new fish Francis Shepard (LisaRaye), a nurse who killed her abusive husband. Inside this low-rent rehash of women-in-prison movie cliches lies an icy sliver of righteous anger at inmate labor — not the notion that work teaches skills and discipline that can help smooth an inmate's transition to the free world, but the cynical exploitation of a captive work force. Low-wage, nonunionized workers increase profit margins for big business and drive blue-collar workers onto the unemployment rolls — who can undercut $1.50 as day? Francis is tossed into a cellblock with much tougher women, and taken under the wing of sweet-natured Bible-thumper Little Mama (Lark Vorhies), a pregnant 17-year-old who killed the stepfather who raped her. Francis eventually makes peace with tough-girl Nikki (N'Bushe Wright), who got caught helping her none-too-bright boyfriend pull off a robbery, and befriends the radical Wet (Monica Calhoun), who's putting together a petition for better conditions. They all steer clear of belligerent Aisha (Tichina Arnold), who's colluding with brutal head guard Dease (Clifton Powell). Francis's disillusionment parallels that of new guard Michael Meadows (Mos Def), a college student hoping to enter law so he can help people; he got his job through family connections and is horrified by the way Dease and his lackeys treat the inmates. When Michael starts doing some research into the business of correctional institutions, the idealistic scales fall from his eyes. If co-writers Preston A. Whitmore II and Joyce Renee Lewis and director Neema Barnette had kept their focus on the brutal collaboration between cutthroat capitalism and corruption within the penal system, they might have made a small classic of socially conscious pulp filmmaking. But there's way too much of the usual bonding, beatings, petty humiliation by guards, cat fights in the yard and trips to the hole, which have been chronicled by films as serious as STRANGER INSIDE (2001) and as blatantly exploitative as Jess Franco's T&A spectaculars. To longtime TV director Barnette's credit, she finished the film despite production problems that shut it down after 14 days and finished it in one long day of additional shooting nearly a year later. At that time, Sabrina, the character played by rapper Da Brat, was reworked into the film's narrator as a way of smoothing over rough transitions. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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