I first tuned into Prison Break
last August, I’ll be honest, not because of Fox’s ubiquitous promos or
the fact that Brett Ratner was a producer and helmed the pilot episode,
but because I was a huge fan of Don Siegel’s 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz,
starring Clint Eastwood. For some folks it’s submarine movies, for some
it’s Mob thrillers; me, I’m smitten by all the labyrinthine,
clandestine planning of a nice jailbreak, so the idea of turning that
conceit on its head by having a guy break into a prison seemed a fairly inventive and intriguing one, right up my alley. That view wouldn’t last the full season, though.

While
most inmates would do anything to get out of Fox River Penitentiary,
structural engineer Michael Scofield (a steely-eyed Wentworth Miller)
has made it his business to try to get in. Believing his brother
Lincoln Burrows (Blade: Trinity’s Dominic Purcell) has been
sentenced to jail die for crime — the murder of the Vice President’s
brother — that he did not commit, Michael concocts a scheme to save him
from the inside out. Armed with prison blueprints — tattooed in code
all over his body — and an impossibly intricate escape plan, Michael
gets himself purposefully incarcerated via an armed robbery frame-up,
all in order to bust he and Lincoln out. Wondering just what the hell
is going on is Veronica Donovan (Robin Tunney), Michael’s counsel and
Lincoln’s ex-flame, now engaged to another, of course.

From the get-go, everything about Prison Break seemed kind of
annoying, from Ratner’s bombastic direction and penchant for commercial
bumper flash-cuts to the exposition-laden dialogue and notion of the
body map tattoo to (especially) Miller’s penchant for going all “Blue
Steel” in every scene. I watched a few more episodes in regular
rotation, then tuned out. Viewing the rest of the season here in
marathon fashion is a confirmation of what little I’ve missed. While
Stacy Keach’s squinty, popsicle-stick-model-making warden, Peter
Stormare’s criminally connected inmate and an effectively slimy Robert
Knepper (who bears the unfortunately menacing nickname “T-Bag” Bagwell)
lend the proceedings some surface engagement and Tunney gamely tries to
crank up the outraged befuddlement, Prison Break seems awfully
wound up on itself. Thing is, there’s not enough gravitational pull
here to make the show’s central conceit work dramatically, and neither
is there enough pop zing to make it breathlessly fun.

The complete first season of Prison Break comes spread out
over six discs with simple, branching menu screens, and packaged in
three slimline cases housed in a master cardboard slipcase. All 22
episodes are presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a 5.1
Dolby surround sound audio track. Regardless of arguable merit, it’s a
nice commercial jump-off for the series, as this DVD set’s supplemental
features include audio commentaries on select episodes by Ratner,
creator Paul Scheuring and a wide assortment of other cast and crew.
There are also promotional TV spots, the Fox Movie Channel’s “Making a
Scene” special, a nice spread of alternate and deleted scenes, and a
trio of other production featurettes that give viewers a
behind-the-scenes look at Michael’s tattoo body art, the filming
location of the Joliet Correctional Center and the like. For me, Prison Break
is all in service of a rather wan and flimsy political conspiracy arc,
something we’ve seen handled before, and frequently much better. For
others, though, there might be some modicum of pleasure in the
willfully murky plottings. C- (Show) A- (Disc)