Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a 2010 drama film, titled Lock
Up. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. In Spain, single father Luis is having trouble
with Fran, his teenage son. Fran is rude, disobedient, violent, and just a general
pain in the rear. He smokes and drinks a lot, plays hooky, insults his dad, blames him for
his mother leaving them when he was a baby, and stays up late on the computer chatting with his
friends while making enough noise to keep Luis awake when he needs to rest before going to work.
Luis tries to communicate with his son, reminding him that he needs to be responsible if he wants
to have a future, but Fran never pays attention to his father's worry and stress. Most of Fran's
time is spent with his best friends Nuria and Miguel, and Nuria becomes the girl Fran has
his first time with. When they're done, Nuria mentions love between them, but Fran quickly
disappoints her by saying they're just friends with benefits and not an actual relationship.
Meanwhile, Fran's stress keeps getting worse when he receives some worrisome calls at work: first,
Fran's teacher asks him for a meeting so they can talk about Fran constantly missing classes.
A few days later, he gets a call from the hospital because Fran and Miguel have gotten in a fight.
When Luis goes to pick up his son, Miguel's parents ask him to control Fran because
he's being a horrible influence on his friends. Luis scolds Fran for his behavior and tells him
he'll start coming to the store to work, but Fran answers by kicking the car and punching his father
before fleeing. On Fran's seventeenth birthday, the boy steals money from his father and leaves
the house after drinking wine to celebrate at a club with his friends. He's having a great time,
but the evening puts a bad taste in his mouth when he finds Nuria kissing another guy.
Meanwhile, Luis is alone in the house with the cake he had bought for his son.
After blowing the candles himself, he decides he's had enough and searches the internet for
a solution. This is how he discovers CIMCA, a correctional center that specializes in rowdy
teenagers. Luis watches a bunch of videos where parents share their experiences:
they also had sons and daughters that misbehaved and even hit them, but CIMCA took their little
rebels and transformed them into well-mannered, responsible students. Luis only stops watching
when he hears Fran come back - the boy is upset and almost goes to his father to talk about it,
but in the end, he prefers to go to bed. The next day, Fran goes to a CIMCA presentation to get a
better idea of how they work. The host talks to the public about family values and bad parenting
in a boisterous yet charismatic way, almost like a religious pastor - and it's very effective,
because the public easily chants back the answers to his questions without hesitation.
In the meantime, Fran stays at home and gets a call from Miguel, who tells him they can't hang
out anymore because his parents have had enough. Fran insults him for betraying him and hangs up
before calling Nuria, but instead of being direct and asking for a friendly ear, he insults her too
for having kissed another guy. Nuria reminds him he was the one that didn't want anything serious,
so Fran hangs up on her too. Later that day, Luis finally takes his decision and when night falls,
two strangers kidnap Fran. The boy cries out for help, but Luis just tells him it's for his
own good. Fran arrives at CIMCA in the morning and insults Principal Oscar when he approaches
him to welcome him. Oscar won't accept this attitude and pushes Fran against the wall,
reminding him he will have to be respectful here if he doesn't want to be punished.
Then Fran gets new generic clothes and his head shaved before he joins his fellow teenage boys,
who welcome him by standing up and chanting a welcome phrase at the same time like soldiers.
While watching an instructional video, Fran tries to talk to one of the boys, but this only gets the
group to stand up again and repeat the rules about silence and respect. There's something
very particular about them: most of them have a brown mark on the skin under their chins.
Afterward, Fran goes through his first day of what will become his daily routine at CIMCA. The boys
spend the morning making clothes pins to learn the value of hard work, have lunch at noon, then go
back to either more pin making or doing exercise. They also go through regular medical check-ups and
sessions of video behavior lessons. Meanwhile, Luis finally has time to relax and enjoy peace
at home, but he does think about Fran, so he sends him a box full of gifts including a water bottle.
When the box arrives at CIMCA though, Fran is allowed to look at it but not to keep it.
Among the activities at CIMCA, there also are therapy sessions that Fran is obliged to attend.
All the boys share how hard things are in their lives, so Fran takes the chance to complain about
his father for having sent him to this place, thinking he's the kind of man that pushes people
away when he doesn't want to hear them and that's probably what he did to his mother too.
However after some words from the doctor, Fran admits he does miss his dad.
Later in the teachers' lounge, Oscar reminds all the instructors that the free day is coming
soon and explains to newcomer Nando what it is about: for one day, all rules are put aside and
they allow the teens to have some fun at a small party, this helps them build up their trust in
their system. Nando is skeptical but uses the chance to offer some complaints, believing it's
unfair for the instructors to eat as badly as the teens do and lamenting the lack of hot water.
However, Oscar doesn't pay these complaints any mind. It seems being ignored leaves Nando in a
bad mood, because later during dinner, he sees one of the boys eating slowly and freaks out.
Accusing him of eating reluctantly, Nando hits the boy's head on the table a couple of times
before throwing him on the floor and force-feeding him. As the rest of the boys begin eating faster,
the guy insults Nando, who answers with a punch and pepper spray. The boy ends up in the clinic,
hurt but alive, and the incident gets the attention of CIMCA's owner, who is worried
about the scandal this could cause if the parents were to find out. Later Oscar scolds Nando for
his actions, but Nando keeps on insisting the teens need a harder hand, so Oscar pushes him
onto the table and threatens to hurt him if he doesn't follow CIMCA's educational system.
When night falls, someone enters the boys' bedroom to record them having nightmares.
Fran wakes up a few moments later when he hears some noises and sneaks out to see what's going on.
After carefully avoiding a guard, Fran makes it to the isolation room, where a boy is tied to a bed
and is kept there with a blindfold on his eyes, gauze in his mouth, and headphones playing loud
noises in his ears. When Fran removes the gauze, the boy starts screaming, so Fran runs away before
he's found. He ends up hiding in a storage room to avoid the guard, but the man finds him anyway,
so Fran jumps on him and begins beating him up. Eventually, two other guards find
him and take him to the punishment room, where Fran finally understands why everyone has that
brown mark on his chin. The teens are forced to lay down on the floor with open arms for hours,
not even taking breaks to go to the bathroom, so they relieve themselves right where they are.
There is always a guard watching them at all times, but at some point in the night,
the same mysterious person comes to record their suffering. As if this wasn't punishment enough,
when morning comes, they play heavy metal music at a painful volume.
By the time the punishment is done and Fran is allowed to return to the daily routine, he also
has a brown mark on his chin. Meanwhile, Luis has begun attending a support group formed by other
parents that have sent their kids to CIMCA, hosted by the same psychologist that works with the boys.
After Luis shares the trouble he went through with Fran, the doctor asks Ernesto to speak next,
who is there with his wife Luz and his daughter Sandra. The girl has recently left the institute
after twenty months of confinement and has been behaving perfectly well, but while Ernesto tells
the others about his experience, she can't stop shaking her leg and looking a little spacey.
She only speaks to ask to go to the bathroom, but Ernesto makes her wait until their turn is over,
so Sandra ends up going right there on the chair. When Luz notices this, she takes her daughter
away, but the sight leaves quite an impression on Luis. Realizing he misses his son, when he returns
home, Luis goes to Fran's bedroom and turns on the computer, crying when he notices that the videos
Fran made with his friends were all in good, clean fun and even included a few shots of Luis himself.
The next day, Luis goes to visit Fran, but he's sent to the principal's office first.
After seeing the kids joking around while cleaning the windows, Oscar welcomes Luis and lets him know
that he can't see Fran because he's been punished for misbehavior. While showing a security camera
video of the night Fran beat up the guard without offering context, Oscar points out
all the behavioral issues Fran has and why it's so important for him to respect the punishment rules,
which includes not seeing his dad for a while. After Luis is gone, Oscar watches over the boys
while they go through another educational video and notices them making jokes among them again.
As soon as he points this out, the teens stop and chant the silence rules, but this time it
isn't enough and Oscar introduces them to a new form of punishment. The group is taken outside
and locked inside a cage while only wearing a tanktop, their underwear, and blindfolds - their
hands are tied as well. For the next few days, they won't be allowed to sleep: they must stay
standing up for as long as possible. Anyone that falls will descend one level and be taken to
the usual punishment room, and the last one left standing will ascend one level closer to freedom.
Slowly but surely, one by one the boys begin to fail the challenge, and as soon as they touch
the floor, they're taken away. Nights are hard because nothing protects them from the cold,
and soon the cage gains a horrible smell because everyone is relieving themselves on the spot.
Meals are equally torturous: one of the instructors brings a box that he leaves
in the middle of the cage and the boys must rush to grab some food. One ration is missing though,
and the guy that wasn't quick enough to grab anything is taken away as well.
At the teacher's lounge, Nando becomes suspicious of the psychologist, and later catches her with a
camera near the cage: she's the one that has been recording all the punishments in secret.
She wants to post the files online to reveal to the world what's really happening at CIMCA,
but Oscar calls her stupid because this kind of tough education is exactly what parents want.
Eventually, all the guys fall inside the cage except for Fran, who is the last one standing
and therefore the winner of this sick game. When he returns to the daily routine, he looks spacey
as everyone else. Unaware of what's happening to his son, Luis continues to attend the support
group meetings and becomes close friends with Luz. He's also in some trouble with the law because he
sent Fran to the institute without his mother's consent. It sounds ridiculous since she left
when Fran was a baby and never cared again, but he likes it or not, her name is still on the papers,
and Luis needs to apply for full custody to make any decision alone. Fortunately, Luz is there to
provide a good distraction: they hang out, have meals together and even end up kissing. Meanwhile,
Sandra asks her father's permission to use the computer and finds out the videos of the
punishment that the psychologist had sent. This triggers a panic attack that results in Sandra
going to the balcony to end her suffering. The videos reaching the internet causes the company
owner to visit the institute again to order Oscar to make the discipline even tighter. From then on,
Oscar is much tougher on the boys: he pushes them against the wall even for small mistakes, sends
them more often to the punishment room, makes them exercise until they throw up from exhaustion, and
even obliges them to pick up their puke with their own hands. One day, Fran finally snaps and stays
behind after lunch is over as a sign of rebellion. His punishment ends up being the worst one yet:
the isolation room he discovered a few weeks ago. He's tied up the same way he had seen the boy that
day and exposed to sensory overload, which causes him to see hallucinations behind the blindfold.
By the time he's freed, Fran is just nothing but an empty shell of a person. Afterward, he's taken
to the gym, where girls and boys have been brought together for their free day. They're allowed to
dance the waltz because it keeps their bodies in a respectful position from the opposite gender,
but when the boys see the state Fran arrives in, one of them stops dancing as another sign
of rebellion. This drives Oscar crazy and makes him punch the guy before going around the gym to
shake every teen and yell at them before they can even think about doing the same. That same day,
the support group is also having a party. Luis attends, but the news about Sandra's death and
Luz's guilt are still in his mind, so he decides to leave without even talking to anyone. Sometime
later, Luis visits Luz, who is still grieving and blaming herself for what happened to her daughter.
Luis comforts her and promises to go pick up Fran, which Luz finds relieving to hear.
Once he arrives at CIMCA, Luis is terrified to see the state Fran is in and asks Nando what
they did to him, but the only answer he gets is "what you requested". Fran doesn't even say
hello to his father and stays silent during the whole ride home, but he does call Nuria when he
arrives so they can meet. Nuria offers sympathy and a gentle embrace that Fran finds comforting.
Going to their daily lives isn't easy. Fran behaves and doesn't drink anymore,
but he never stays in a room when his father is around. At some point, Fran even takes out
all the decorations and old knick-knacks from his bedroom because he can't stand the sight of them,
some days he also likes to put his head out the window and scream profanities. Luis brings him a
new cellphone as a reward for his good behavior, but Fran turns it down and gives his dad the
water bottle back too, demonstrating that his feelings can't be bought with his gifts. One day,
while they're cooking together, Fran finally snaps and yells at his dad for having sent him to CIMCA.
However, Luis quickly interrupts him and explains himself, apologizing for what he did. He admits
he made a mistake, but everything he's done has always been for the sake of Fran's well-being.
After his wife abandoned him merely because she wanted to enjoy life instead of raising a kid,
Luis had to deal with raising Fran on his own. Being a single dad is already a hard task,
but Fran's attitude made it even harder. Luis worked hard to give Fran as many opportunities
as possible, but Fran kept wasting them, and eventually stress took its toll on Luis. He had
thought CIMCA was an actual solution, but had he known the horrors that happen between those walls,
he would've never sent Fran there. Luis is tired of hiding his own suffering, and ends
up crying as he tells Fran how much he loves him, making Fran cry as well. Sometime later,
Luis goes to see his ex so can finally have the papers that give him full custody of Fran signed,
although Fran decides to wait in the car because he doesn't want to meet his mom.
Once he has the papers in hand, Luis is too emotional to keep on driving so
he stops the car to take a moment to put himself together under the rain.
Feeling bad for his dad, Fran leaves the car and hugs Luis tightly. A few days later, father
and son are together enjoying a vacation on the beach as they begin to mend their relationship.