Escape At Dannemora: Ben Stiller's Unlikely Return to TV

Ben Stiller has always been one of the harder talents for me to get a grasp on it. He has genuine talent as an impressionist and writer (even after a quarter of a century, the cancellation of his sketch comedy series still seems like one of Fox’s biggest blunders), but as an acting presence on the silver screen, he has always been off-putting. Occasionally, in a film like Royal Tenenbaums or Tropic Thunder, you can see some of the genius that he once had permeate, but the majority of his films have always seemed to be empty shells, which is why his popularity at the box office has always escaped me. So, the idea that his return to television, much less helming a Showtime mini-series based on a true story, seems like a plot from one of his worst films. And yet, Escape At Dannemora plays like one of the best mini-series of a year that has already produced several superb ones. It probably helps matters than Stiller has limited his presence to directing, leaving the acting and writing to other artists.

Escape is based on one of the more bizarre true stories in recent years. Set almost entirely in a maximum security prison in upstate New York, it unfolds slowly, like some of the best prison movies. The story focuses on the three principals: Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro, demonstrating again why he is one of the great character actors of our time) a multiple murderer with a flair for art, and negotiating the black market that makes up the prison; David Sweat (Paul Dano) a struggling inmate, trying to deal with the desertions of his family and support system, and Joyce ‘Tilly’ Mitchell (an almost unrecognizable Patricia Arquette) the fifty-ish prison wood shop supervisor in an unhappy marriage who has affairs with both inmates, and becomes an unwitting (or is she) co-conspirator in their attempt to escape..

Matt has a very soulful attitude, who despite ‘having done some messed up shit’, has an eye for art and literature that you just don’t expect to see in a con, or even a lot of other people these day. One day, in a sweep of the block, he finds himself in a hidden panel, and begins to think of a way to get out. He recruits Sweat, who used to be an engineer on the outside, and is far more desperate to get out than Sweat is. Sweat and Tilly were clearly engaged a passionless and not very subtle ‘affair’, and Matt finds a way to easily manipulate her, and it becomes very clear early on that part of her finds even the illegality of this arousing in a way her domestic life isn’t.

Escape has arguably the best cast of any mini-series this year. In addition to the three leads, David Morse plays a sympathetic prison guard, a man more than willing to look the other way when contraband becomes visible in people’s cell, and Bonnie Hunt,  one of the most undervalued actresses in any medium, as a representative of the New York Attorney General, who comes in to interrogate Joyce while the escape is still going on. Stiller’s direction, an art that is generally ignored in the field of television, is surprisingly subtle. He manages to make the claustrophobic world of the prison, and the often magnificent snowscapes of the world, seem equal in the eyes. When Matt says that he looks outside his cell, and can ‘see the tower’, he manages to make us see it too.

Even if you remember how the true-life story played out (spoiler: not well), Escape at Dannemora remains a stark and subtle story. How much of that credit should go to Stiller and how much to Michael Tolkin, the writer is hard to say, but there’s a steady hand that you don’t expect from the man who brought us Night at the Museum. This is a good limited series to wrap up the year, and a good direction for Stiller to proceed in.

My score:4.75 stars.