The more I find out what REALLY HAPPEND the more disappointed I am...

There is so much to like about the film. Great music, and acting. Oliver Stone really elevates the material but most of it is likely pure fiction.

I found the story compelling until I tried to find out what really happend.
The main character, Billy Hayes keeps changing his story and more and more additional details emerged. He was afterall a writer and these 5 years were the source of this fame.

After watching some early convincing interviews, I was disappointed to hear in later interviews that he said in his third year he was transferred to a farm island that packaged strawberries and he escaped on a row boat and swam to Greece. There was no guard or killing anyone in the sanitarium. In fact the large thick sticks were greatly exaggerated for the film, they were more like reed like whipping sticks.I am sure it was still painful and unpleasant. But was a lot less scary than in the film.

What else was imagined or embellished? it is hard to know what happend and how bad Turkish prisons really were. Also, the prison was co-ed, he observed women in it. I am sure it was no country club, but I don't think it was quite so medieval either.