This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Sleepers (1996)
Four Amerikan boys go to juvenile prison after a prank goes awry. They
suffer savage abuse during their incarceration and execute the
most sadistic guard years later in revenge. It's an exposure of the
oppression of both children and prisoners in a system that has nothing
to do with stopping "crime" and everything to do with power over youth
and the oppressed. The guards live in a sadistic sexual dreamworld of
terror-rape at will. The movie also doesn't judge two of the boys who
become hit-men when they get out; the prison made them killers. The
Catholic church is upset because in the movie the neighborhood priest
lies for them on the stand to get them off for a murder they did
commit. The lying priest is a hero, which suits MIM fine. Finally,
the nuclear family is not saved, the court system is not vindicated,
and no one lives happily ever after. The characters do find a way to
redeem their humanity within an oppressive system, and in that the
movie is positive without raising false hopes of reformist solutions.