good but not great

Im really not sure about this film, It had some very good parts to it, my favourites being when zico came back as a ghost to haunt dagger and when dagger breaks down at the church doors, excellently acted - there wasn't enough of this kind of thing.
When the first inmate tells his story and we see it as a flashback i thought it was a brilliant idea but, then you get onto story number 5 and it just gets boring and forced. The diologue lacks here too, its too contrived to be believable then, the doctor doesn't pry and delve into inmates stories of how they got there, they tell them freely but in an unbleievable manner and then we see how those actions transpired, it just got boring.
I realise the whole film was building these characters up so that we would care for them -the way the doctor did, so that we would then be more shocked when the police finally storm the prison but most of these characters survived anyway ...and their personal accounts were given to us documentary style in quick sentences that meant nothing.
I didnt think the prison seemed as harsh as it was made out to be, an episode of 'OZ' has more violence in about 10 minutes.
I dont think the director planned this project well enough, he seemed to interpret the stories from the book and mix them togethr with other characters and then just didnt know how to tell them with any passion.
Dont get me wrong I enjoyed the film and the closness to the prisnoers it portrayed it was just a bit incoherrant and hard to follow.

i noticed in the 'making of' the actors wanted to take on a more improvised realistic approach but the director was so steriotypical it was untrue; - "Stick to the script people!". Personally, I think he should've listened to the actors rather than getting his 'envisioned scene'. I think the DOP came out with a lot of *beep* about shots, trying to justify teh style when all he was really doing was following what the director wanted, even when he was obviously wrong.
the one great thing that stood out in this film was the location and the lighting. Some scenes were perfectly lit, they looked like a painting, so kudos to the lighting director :-)

All in all, a good little film with a few mistakes, a very interesting story told by the wrong person.