An intense and brutal film, showcasing a spellbinding performance by Londoner Joe Cole. It's the true-story tribulations of a young, British, heroin addicted boxer (Billy Moore, based on his memoir) locked inside a Thai prison. It's like Rocky meets Midnight Express, but not in the Rocky Express way, more in the Midnight Rocky sense. Basically, we watch a man get beat up on one way or another for over two hours, and while it's a grueling watch, the romance involving a prison transsexual ('ladyboy') was handled with decorum and respect. There is nothing new to see here, but what you get is hard hitting and packs a punch. When all is said and done, it's not the sort of film you 'like', it's the sort of film you experience.

Good movie, very violent and the main actor share with the spectator all emotions. The main issue of this movie is language but I think it's to show the distress of the character in foreign country. The story seems to be incomplete sometimes. Not a better movie of the decade but good movie to watch.

An outstanding piece of misery porn. It uses every trick in the book to put you in the shoes of this characters, and it’s very effective. Excellent visuals and sound design, the director clearly has a lot of faith in visual storytelling (very few exposition dumps; great call to avoid using subtitles) and it goes in directions you don’t see coming. Joe Cole’s performance is amazing (his character gains so much depth just by the acting choices he’s making) and the fact that they used real inmates for the supporting cast adds a lot of grit, authenticity and realism. There’s not really a deeper meaning to it, but as a purely visceral, emotional experience, this certainly did a lot for me. I have to commend it for that, because a film this bleak has a lot of pitfalls (feeling over the top to the point of parody; trying way too hard to be edgy; feeling monotonous; etc.), and it somehow managed to avoid all of them. 9/10

It was okay I suppose. While I understand it’s recounting real life events, I do feel the film could have done a better job about establishing a narrative. It very much just felt like “and then this happens, and then this happens” rather than having a prevailing theme throughout Wouldn’t be in a rush to watch it again

The movie is based on the book by Billy Moore - not all scenes reflect the truth from his memoirs, including the transexual partner, as Billy him self states on his YouTube channel - The All or nothing with Billy Moore - he even has Joe Cole on to have a chat about the movie in one of his recent episodes touring the streets of London. Billy is a surprisingly likeable person who has since reformed from his previous drug habits.