Sentenced to a maximum-security prison for possession and intent to sell marijuana, young Ron Decker (played by Edward Furlong, who only gets better with every film he makes) is a lamb thrown to the wolves, whose only hope is in finding someone inside who is willing to help protect him. That someone is Earl (played by Willem Dafoe, in the role of his career). Crafty, self-educated, and burnt-out, Earl has been in prison for 18 years, and he wields enough influence among his inmates and even the guards that he has begun to believe it’s his prison. At first it’s not quite clear why he goes to such lengths to help Decker out; one suspects sinister intentions, which only adds to the suspense. But the real reasons are at once as complex and yet emotionally direct as they would be in real life.

Other movies have captured the fear and despair of imprisonment, but none before Animal Factory have quite conveyed the social nuances of it from a prisoner’s point of view. (In one powerful scene, a racially-motivated dispute ends in violence when the guards open fire from above, and you get a sense that none of the prisoners or guards wanted it to get to that point.)

Buscemi, who is best known as an actor, directs this film with a masterful sense of pacing and character. (His directorial debut, Trees Lounge, remains one of the truly great sleepers of the late 1990s.). His method is simply to show us what we need to see, and to give us the credit for being able to fill in some of the blanks ourselves along the way.

I loved Animal Factory because I believed it, every minute of it, and I cared for not only Decker and Earl, but for half a dozen other minor characters as well. Despite the movie’s title, this is a very human film indeed.