K-11 (2012)

Butterfly: "I like to think it's a sanctuary for broken toys."

By Jules Stewart
With Goran Visnjic, Kate del Castillo and Portia Doubleday

I am not so sure how I came across K-11 but the story intrigued me so I decided to give it a shot despite the low rating.

Raymond Saxx Jr. is highly drugged and mostly unconscious through the process of him getting in jail. This results in a drugged and sadistic officer putting him in K-11, a special block of the prison reserved for homosexuals and transgenders. When he comes back to his senses he has to find a way to survive and needs to find allies to do so.

K-11 started off well, at least for the first minutes. I think it is quite a scary thought to everyone to wake up in a place like jail, not knowing what's happened and not knowing how to adapt. Sadly, the result quickly deteriorates and it loses all pretensions. Actually, no, I think if it did lose all pretensions it could have been a fun comedy or parody, but it never does so and we are left with a over-the-top jail block run with no surveillance except for the drugged officer who allows drugs in and lusts after the inmates.

The story line of Raymond Saxx's incarceration is never clear and fails to be of any interest. Some of the characters in the K-11 block are interesting, like Butterfly, but most of them are just parodies, like the skinny punk with Nazi tattoos and who is also the bodyguard of Mousey, the transsexual who runs the block. Mousey was absolutely awful both as a character and in the acting, which I'm not sure whether it was voluntary or not but it really irritated me. Some scenes are funny, some are touching but they are so few and scarce that the movie turns into a farce anyway.

I liked: The premise. A few ensemble scenes, to see the whole block cheer together or play.

I disliked: Does not work as a comedy or a drama, tries to do both. I almost felt bad for homosexuals and transgender persons because of their depiction here.

27/100
It has some goods things but clearly, they don't make up for the whole movie. The good thing is that it is kinda short.