Wasteman (2026)

“Taylor” (David Jonsson) has been told that early release might be in the offing if he can keep his nose clean for a few more weeks in prison. He generally keeps himself to himself, and offers the floor’s drug pedlars a short back and sides now and again in return for a supply of pills. When the newly arrived “Dee” (Tom Blyth) is put into his cell, the pair quickly seem to strike up a sort of friendship as the enterprising newbie sets up a shop trading everything from chocolate to drugs. Needless to say, the established traders don’t take kindly to his new business and so set about restoring their preferred equilibrium. Whilst that might work for them, though, it puts a great and perilous strain on “Taylor” whose chances of parole could well be compromised by the behaviour of his now very angry and vengeful cell-mate. This is a quickly paced and authentic looking prison drama that shows us a dog-eat-dog world at it’s most violent. The prison officers are plentiful enough but seem incapable of stemming the regular drone deliveries or of stopping the gang warfare that prevails amongst inmates for whom law and order is defined more by a survival of the fittest mentality. Jonsson offers us a calm and measured character who is understated and ostensibly just biding his time til he can rejoin his son; Blyth on the other hand presents a much more blatantly aggressive and manipulative character and Cal McCau manages to blend the two together convincingly as this story heads towards a denouement that I felt clever, unexpected and really quite fitting. It’s one of those films that showcases jail as little more than a zoo for society’s undesirables, but this time there is a man with some semblance of integrity and shrewdness behind the bars who is playing a game of his own - and it’s well worth ninety minutes.