Review: Trapped in dreary 'K-11' prison story

By Gary Goldstein

March 14, 2013 12 AM PT

“K-11” has the makings of a cult movie campfest but little of the authentic wit, edge or outré vision it would take to get there. What’s left is a dreary jailhouse drama that somehow managed to imprison a few notable actors within its lurid walls.

The convoluted script by director Jules Stewart (Kristen’s mom) and Jared Kurt involves Raymond Saxx Jr. (Goran Visnjic of “E.R.”), a drug-fueled music mogul and murder suspect hauled into Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail. Thanks to a corrupt — and weirdly hapless — sheriff’s deputy, Lt. Johnson (D.B. Sweeney), Saxx is placed in the lockup’s K-11 wing for gay and transgender prisoners. That Saxx is straight is irrelevant to Johnson, who’s got his roving eye on this hunky “new fish.”

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What follows is an episodic, often unfocused visit to a kind of sexually eclectic hell ruled by an over-the-top transsexual bully called Mousey (Kate del Castillo). Fellow inmates include waifish transgender Butterfly (Portia Doubleday), brutal child molester Detroit (Tommy “Tiny” Lister), drug dealer Ben (Jason Mewes) and the mohawked Sledgehammer (Cameron Stewart, Jules’ son) plus a ham-handed host of other one-noters.

Saxx’s learning curve and eventual exit strategy from K-11 lack much logic or momentum, though Stewart does find room here for a chilling rape, a gory throat-slitting and an impromptu cell block fashion show.

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“K-11.”

No MPAA Rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

At Laemmle’s NoHo 7, North Hollywood.