Yet underneath the plotting and internecine tussles of the would-be escapees lurks something much more interesting: the story of a seduction.
The seducer is the real-life Larry Marley (a superb Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), an Irish Republican Army prisoner still smarting from the deaths of fellow hunger strikers some months earlier. (At the time, the IRA was engaged in a violent struggle to free Northern Ireland from English rule.) A hard, pale man with intelligent eyes and a deceptively compliant manner, Marley knows that any escape from this fortress will require information only the guards possess. Accordingly, he embarks on a campaign to gain the trust of Gordon (Barry Ward), an officer he instinctively recognizes as more conflicted and vulnerable than the others.
What follows is a slow, sidling dance of advance and retreat as Gordon gradually becomes accustomed to Marley’s helping with housekeeping and hanging around to chat. This charm offensive turns “Maze” into an unusually quiet, watchful thriller: Aside from one early skirmish and the rather chaotic escape itself, Burke’s thoughtful script mostly unfolds without the usual prison-movie tumult. Following his lead, cinematographer David Grennan uses calm close-ups to isolate the two men, zooming in tight even in crowd scenes to elevate the individual over the mob.
Adopting a measured, nonpartisan approach to his touchy material, Burke shows Gordon weathering political pressures and a terrifying attack on his family, while Marley struggles to dissuade his son from following him into a life of political terrorism. In one beautifully lighted scene, as Marley comforts the widow of a hunger striker, this brooding movie takes time to remember the women who were left to carry on.
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‘Maze’
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.