‘Inside’ Review: A Tragic Prison Tale Anchored by Three Memorable Performances

Charles Williams’s feature-length directorial debut, Inside, centers on a trio of dangerous men who are forced into each other’s orbit, leading to an outcome that’s both violently chaotic and tragically predictable. And the more this prison drama reveals about the three of them, the more that contradiction seems to describe their entire lives.

Warren (Guy Pearce) is set to be released on parole in just a few days, but he won’t make it out the door alive unless he can find a way to pay off his considerable gambling debts first. He learns that a massive bounty has been placed on the head of Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis)—a particularly notorious criminal who’s taken to delivering bizarre religious sermons in the prison chapel—but doesn’t want to jeopardize his release by shanking Shepard himself. When a volatile, impressionable teenager named Mel (Vincent Miller) becomes Shepard’s new cellmate, Warren hatches a plan to claim the bounty and walk away scot-free.

It’s a premise that throws up some interesting twists and turns, even if some later events involving Warren feel a tad contrived. We know that all three of them have done something serious to wind up in prison, but the details of their crimes only arrive in pieces via fragmented flashbacks, prison-yard gossip, and glimpses of TV news broadcasts. But Inside is less about the machinations of its plot than about the three central performances that drive it.

Jarvis has already established himself as the sort of performer who thrives on transformation. From his beardy, bellowing turn in Netflix’s Shōgun to his gormless gangster in Barry Levinson’s Alto Knights, each new role seems to come with a new accent, a new appearance, a whole new way of being. That’s especially true for Shepard, given the character’s balding crown, shuffling body language, Aussie twang, and palsied way of speaking (shades of Marlon Brando in The Godfather). Jarvis, especially his dialogue, sometimes gets lost under all the affectations, but there’s something about the intensity the actor brings to his characterization that ensures that, even if it’s not totally successful, it’s too beguiling to be called a failure either.

Mel, meanwhile, is a wiry scrap of a kid, and Miller’s performance has a similar leanness to it. Near silent for much of Inside, Miller trusts the haunted look in his eyes and the caged-animal twitchiness he conjures to convey how frightened Mel is and how dangerous this makes him. Which makes it all the more incredible when he and Warren begin to bond and we see the flicker of something warm and human emerging from his seemingly hollowed-out being.

But it’s Pearce who delivers Inside’s most affecting performance with a reined-in turn topped off with just a little sprinkling of that movie-star charisma. A man who’s well adapted to prison life, Warren mostly keeps his emotions tucked away behind a blank expression and the odd bit of wry humor, but we see him briefly drawn out of that shell in moments of joy, murderous fury, and utter heartbreak. He becomes a father figure in Mel’s life, passing down wisdom and advice about the importance of being comfortable in your own skin. Inside’s greatest strength is how comfortably Pearce wears his character’s skin, no matter where the story takes him.