Felon

You’re an ordinary citizen, you have a family, a growing business a life. One night you catch someone in your house; you chase them out into the yard swinging your baseball bat and accidentally hit him in the head. He dies on the neighbor’s lawn and you get sent away to prison. That’s the premise of Felon – a gripping drama starring Stephen Dorff as that guy who’s trying to protect his family, but winds up doing time in a maximum-security facility known as “the shoe,” sharing a cell with a mass murderer and being subject to beatings from a sadistic prison guard. Val Kilmer beefed up and is quietly threatening as Dorff’s bunk-mate and Harold Perrineau plays against type as the hater in charge of the unit. Director Ric Roman Waugh did extensive research on prison life and got the thumbs up from both former and current inmates in the system, so both the story and dialog feel authentic. Dorff delivers first, as a frightened “fish” that’s used by a neo-Nazi gang, and then as a fighter who takes on anyone and everyone in the exercise yard as a means of survival. Grim but hopeful, Felon is a gritty and absorbing film that’s both action-packed and thought provoking. Well worth checking out.  

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