--- title: "Midnight Express" year: 1978 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/midnight-express" fi1m_score: 61 critics_score: 56 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-20T06:01:10.013321+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:01:10.616353+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Midnight Express (1978) Directed by Alan Parker · 2h 01m · MPA R · Drama, Crime **Fi1m score: 61** · Critics 56 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* A prison so handsomely lit you almost forgive it for never meeting a single decent Turk > Alan Parker’s prison drama is built with real skill and it grips, often against our will. But Oliver Stone’s script paints every Turk in the same dark shade and asks for a sympathy for its hero that it never quite earns. ## Synopsis Istanbul, 1970. Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), a young American, tapes bricks of hashish to his body under his shirt and walks towards a flight home with his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle). The airport search finds them. A friendly stranger who calls himself Tex (Bo Hopkins) offers help of an uncertain kind, and Billy is sent to an Istanbul prison to wait for trial. Inside he falls in with the other foreigners: Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid), an American with a short fuse; Erich (Norbert Weisser), a quiet Swede; Max (John Hurt), an Englishman dissolving into heroin. Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli) runs the block’s black market and reports to the guards, and Hamidou (Paul L. Smith), the head warder, runs everything else. Billy’s father (Mike Kellin) flies in with a lawyer. Billy wants to go home. The court has other ideas. ## Review *Midnight Express* is taken from Billy Hayes’s account of his years in a Turkish prison after he was caught smuggling hashish out of Istanbul, and Alan Parker films it as a descent, one locked door after another. It is a superbly made film and a crude one, and the two facts sit side by side for 121 minutes. We can recommend it to anyone who wants to see how a director and an editor can hold an audience by the throat. We cannot pretend the hands are clean. The craft is the first thing we notice and the last thing we forget. Michael Seresin shoots the airport in flat, hot daylight and the prison in the brown light that comes through high barred windows, so the prisoners look like something left in a cupboard. Geoffrey Kirkland’s prison is stone, iron and dirty whitewash, with a courtyard that never gets the sun. Milena Canonero dresses the men in layers of pale, greying cloth that seem to have grown on them. Gerry Hambling cuts the opening search to the sound of Billy’s own heartbeat: nothing happens for two minutes and we could not breathe. Giorgio Moroder’s score is all synthesiser, a pulse and a rising sequence of chords that has nothing to do with Turkey or 1970 and everything to do with panic, and it suits a film that is not about a place but about a man losing his footing. When it drops out and the prison is left with its own sounds, footsteps, a bolt, a man weeping somewhere, the silence does as much work as the music. Brad Davis plays Billy as a boy who thinks charm will get him out, and the performance is a slow record of the charm being taken away. John Hurt’s Max is the film’s finest hour, a wreck of an Englishman who has made peace with his own ruin and offers Billy advice in the voice of a man reading aloud from the back of a cereal packet; he is funny, and then he is not, and Hurt never signals the change. Randy Quaid gives Jimmy a rage that gets everyone into trouble, and Paolo Bonacelli’s Rifki, all smiles and ledgers, is a proper piece of villainy. Then there is the problem, and it is not a small one. Oliver Stone’s screenplay gives us a Turkey in which every guard is a sadist, every official is for sale and every lawyer is a crook. The Turkish dialogue is left without subtitles, so the people running Billy’s life are noise to us as they are to him; that is a defensible choice for one scene and a lazy one for two hours. The script also wants Billy treated as a wholly innocent man, when the film has shown us the hashish in the first five minutes. The late courtroom tirade Stone writes for Billy, which we will not quote, is the film at its ugliest and its most pleased with itself. Here is what we felt. Early on, Hamidou has Billy hung by his ankles and beaten on the soles of his feet, and Parker holds the shot while Paul L. Smith works, patient and bored, as if shelling peas. We were horrified, and we were meant to be, and it worked. Later, as the film piled on another cruelty and another and the score rose to tell us how to take it, we noticed we were still gripped and resented it, the way we resent a stranger who has grabbed our arm to make a point. The great prison films, *A Man Escaped* or *Cool Hand Luke*, let the audience find the horror in a routine. Parker finds it in a set piece, then finds a bigger one. The set pieces are among the best staged of their decade. But the film is finally more interested in what can be done to a body than in what a cage does to a mind, and Hurt, who plays the second thing, is left at the edge of the frame. See it for Seresin, Hambling, Moroder and Hurt, and for a first hour that would teach anyone how to build dread. Go in knowing that the country on screen is a nightmare rather than a place. It carries an 18 certificate and earns it. *Fi1m score 61, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics agree that Alan Parker directs with real force and that the prison itself is convincingly built: a closed, frightening world that several reviews say still holds up decades on. Brad Davis is praised almost everywhere, John Hurt more than once, and Oliver Stone’s screenplay has admirers for its raw momentum. Roughly half the reviews come down in the film’s favour. The split is wide, and it turns on what the film asks us to feel. The reservations cluster on its portrayal of Turks as uniformly corrupt and sadistic, on how far it departs from Hayes’s own account, and on its readiness to let the audience enjoy the brutality while feeling only for the American at its centre. The New Yorker goes furthest, condemning it as xenophobic fantasy; Radio Times gives it full marks while conceding the same criticisms are valid. Empire admires it as exploitation and names its racism in the same breath. ### Reviews we read (11) - **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (5/5): Despite valid criticisms of its sympathetic portrayal of drug traffickers, violence and stereotypes, it remains a superbly staged drama that forces consideration of moral themes through its excesses. Directed with power by Alan Parker, it features outstanding performances especially from Brad Davis and John Hurt. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-izonmo/midnight-express/) - **Empire**, Adam Smith (70/100, inferred): The critic calls Alan Parker's film a masterpiece of exploitation cinema that grips the audience through tension and sympathy for the lead. They single out Oliver Stone's bombastic script for praise while noting its misleading basis in fact, racism and gratuitous violence. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/midnight-express-review/) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (B-): The film converts Hayes' story into an exploitative yet meditative prison drama that succeeds when focusing on the psychological toll but falters with its racist depictions of Turks as uniformly corrupt and sadistic. It features strong work from the cast and a notable synth score but is at war with itself in its handling of extreme material. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/midnight-express-1798203725) - **Time Out**, TR (60/100, inferred): The film is a heavily fictionalised account of an American on a drug charge enduring hell in a Turkish jail. Performances lend some depth, but it prioritises clear-cut emotional impact over moral nuance and effectively panders to audience instincts as a thriller. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/midnight-express-1) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (50/100, inferred): The critic praises director Alan Parker's creation of a fully realized prison world and its terror but objects to the film's eagerness to generate sympathy for the protagonist and its over-the-top indignation toward the Turks. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midnight-express-1978) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (50/100, inferred): The review finds the cast, direction and production very good but faults the muddled, moralizing screenplay for its difficulty in sorting proper empathies and its Anglo-American hand-wringing over alien cultures. [Read](https://variety.com/1977/film/reviews/midnight-express-1200424212/) - **The New York Times** (30/100, inferred): The piece criticizes the film for its relentless savaging of the audience through atrocities and grotesque tirades, noting its changeable morality that allows viewers to thrill to depravity without feeling compromised. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/14/archives/critics-notebook-2-hit-films-without-gimmicks-flops-make-comebacks.html) - **The Times**, Ed Potton (★★★★☆): The critic describes Alan Parker’s film as one of the most disturbing — and problematic — re-creations of incarceration on film. It taps into the potent fear of losing liberty far from home. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/film-review-midnight-express-1978-08dtvt7f6) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (10/100, inferred): The critic condemns the film as a mean-spirited, manipulative exercise in sadomasochistic and xenophobic fantasy that piles on horrors and dehumanizes Turks while sanctimoniously victimizing the protagonist. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/11/27/movie-yellow-journalism) - **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's enduring power as a hard-hitting account of incarceration, noting its authentic depiction and strong performances, particularly Brad Davis's. They single out the restraint in violence and lack of subtitles for authenticity. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/midnight-express-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) - **HeyUGuys**, Dave Roper (4/5): The review highlights the film's powerful indictment of brutality and corruption, commending Brad Davis's performance and Alan Parker's direction. It notes the harshness but finds it worthwhile for its message on justice. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/midnight-express-bluray-review/) ## Details - **Director:** Alan Parker - **Director:** Alan Parker - **Screenplay:** Oliver Stone - **Cinematography:** Michael Seresin - **Editor:** Gerry Hambling - **Music:** Giorgio Moroder - **Production design:** Geoffrey Kirkland - **Costume design:** Milena Canonero - **Producer:** Alan Marshall, David Puttnam - **Cast:** Brad Davis as Billy Hayes; Irene Miracle as Susan; Bo Hopkins as Tex; Paolo Bonacelli as Rifki; Paul L. Smith as Hamidou; Randy Quaid as Jimmy Booth; Norbert Weisser as Erich; John Hurt as Max - **Runtime:** 2h 01m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 27 October 1978 - **Genres:** Drama, Crime - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $35 million ## Where to watch in the US - The Roku Channel: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AR, AT, BE, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, ID, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RS, SE, SG, TH, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1979: Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Original Score (won); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won) - BAFTA Film Awards 1979: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (won); Best Direction (won); Best Editing (won) - Golden Globes 1978: Best Motion Picture – Drama (won); Best Screenplay (won); Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (won) ## If you liked this - *A Man Escaped* (1956): Bresson finds more terror in a spoon and a rope than Parker does in a beating. - *Brute Force* (1947): Dassin’s prison is as cruel as Parker’s and far more honest about its warders. - *Papillon* (1973), Fi1m 74: McQueen and Hoffman in the penal colonies; slower, grander, kinder to its men. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/papillon.md) - *Hunger* (2008), Fi1m 86: McQueen’s Maze prison film watches a body fail and refuses to tell you how to feel. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/hunger.md) - *A Prophet* (2009), Fi1m 86: Audiard’s French prison is a school, and the lesson is worse than the violence. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-prophet.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/midnight-express