A faux-documentary that freezes a moment in history like a fly suspended in amber,
Punishment Park could only be a product of Vietnam-and-civil-rights-protest era America. It posits the creation of correctional facilities in the desert where political offenders of assorted ilks are sent on a brutal hike towards the hope of a pardon. This is all purportedly filmed by European documentary crews, and intercuts the sham trials of the accused with their hopeless trek and the growing blood thirst of the law enforcement officers on their trail.
For all the accusations it predictably met with of being a political assault by European hippies on the American right, it actually presents a surprisingly plausible set of characters on both sides of the divide, the prisoners as frequently reduced to frothing away and sloganeering as their accusers. Furthermore, despite being unmistakably a child of its time, it's not anachronistic at all: it's chilling to realise how little has actually changed for the better. It remains relevant.
7/10
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