In one of the bonus features, writer-director Ric Roman Waugh says he didn't want to glorify gangs in his prison film, "Felon." That he doesn't is refreshing. So is Waugh's insistence on making an honest film rather than a gritty one. He did his homework, and he showed the results to inmates who said he got it right. But if it speaks to inmates because of its accuracy, filmgoers on the outside will no doubt respond the "what ifs" that "Felon" inspires.
What if you woke up in the middle of the night and heard an intruder downstairs in your home? What if, checking on your child, you noticed that the man actually entered through the little boy's bedroom. What would you do? Would you dial 911, as an officer says he should have done, or would you grab that baseball bat under your bed and try to defend your family? And when the man shoves you to the ground in your own kitchen and runs out the door, what would your impulse be? Would you pursue him? And in the heat of the moment, if he reached in his pocket and turned around to face you and you shouted for him to stop and he didn't, would you swing that bat?
The proposition behind "Felon" is that many people would react exactly the same as Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) did on the night that changed his life. Though Wade swings for the man's shoulders, the intruder ducks, so that instead the bat cracks his skull as if it were a melon. End of intruder; beginning of story. In short order Wade is charged with second-degree murder and hauled off to jail, where he's given a jump suit and is jumped for no apparent reason by a man screaming about wanting to make him his "bitch" just nine minutes into the film. You think, at that moment, oh great, another watch yourself in the showers prison flick, but Waugh stays on the periphery of that nonsense and instead concentrates on those what ifs. What if it were you who was imprisoned after a situation like that, accepting a plea-bargain that gives you a three-year sentence, and on the bus ride to prison you witness a stabbing and end up being handed the weapon and told what to say and do. What's your impulse? Do you play along? Do you tell the guards? Do you play it cagey until you get the lay of the land?
Because the point of view is mostly Wade's, continues to prompt those "what if" questions in our own minds, which is how "Felon" solicits our unlikely empathy. After all, this is a decent fellow who's suddenly thrown in with the dregs of society, a bunch of thugs who collectively have every tattoo from all the parlors on the West Coast. It could have been you . . . or me. "Felon" succeeds because it downplays the clichés and really explores the hypothetical premise so that viewers can participate in a frighteningly vicarious way.
Then there's Val Kilmer. If I didn't see the cover art and deduce which actor was which, I never would have picked Kilmer out. He's a big guy in this film with horn-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache to go along with the requisite tattoos. He plays John Smith, a lifer who killed multiple times and who has a reputation for inciting riots at every prison he's been sent to. But thankfully that reputation and the clichés that go along with it are checked at the door when he checks into this new prison. Instead, when he's assigned to share a cell with Wade, we get an uneasy friendship that develops between the men, and that friendship factors into the outcome.
In one of the bonus features, writer-director Ric Roman Waugh says he didn't want to glorify gangs in his prison film, "Felon." That he doesn't is refreshing. So is Waugh's insistence on making an honest film rather than a gritty one. He did his homework, and he showed the results to inmates who said he got it right. But if it speaks to inmates because of its accuracy, filmgoers on the outside will no doubt respond the "what ifs" that "Felon" inspires.
What if you woke up in the middle of the night and heard an intruder downstairs in your home? What if, checking on your child, you noticed that the man actually entered through the little boy's bedroom. What would you do? Would you dial 911, as an officer says he should have done, or would you grab that baseball bat under your bed and try to defend your family? And when the man shoves you to the ground in your own kitchen and runs out the door, what would your impulse be? Would you pursue him? And in the heat of the moment, if he reached in his pocket and turned around to face you and you shouted for him to stop and he didn't, would you swing that bat?
The proposition behind "Felon" is that many people would react exactly the same as Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) did on the night that changed his life. Though Wade swings for the man's shoulders, the intruder ducks, so that instead the bat cracks his skull as if it were a melon. End of intruder; beginning of story. In short order Wade is charged with second-degree murder and hauled off to jail, where he's given a jump suit and is jumped for no apparent reason by a man screaming about wanting to make him his "bitch" just nine minutes into the film. You think, at that moment, oh great, another watch yourself in the showers prison flick, but Waugh stays on the periphery of that nonsense and instead concentrates on those what ifs. What if it were you who was imprisoned after a situation like that, accepting a plea-bargain that gives you a three-year sentence, and on the bus ride to prison you witness a stabbing and end up being handed the weapon and told what to say and do. What's your impulse? Do you play along? Do you tell the guards? Do you play it cagey until you get the lay of the land?
Because the point of view is mostly Wade's, continues to prompt those "what if" questions in our own minds, which is how "Felon" solicits our unlikely empathy. After all, this is a decent fellow who's suddenly thrown in with the dregs of society, a bunch of thugs who collectively have every tattoo from all the parlors on the West Coast. It could have been you . . . or me. "Felon" succeeds because it downplays the clichés and really explores the hypothetical premise so that viewers can participate in a frighteningly vicarious way.
Then there's Val Kilmer. If I didn't see the cover art and deduce which actor was which, I never would have picked Kilmer out. He's a big guy in this film with horn-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache to go along with the requisite tattoos. He plays John Smith, a lifer who killed multiple times and who has a reputation for inciting riots at every prison he's been sent to. But thankfully that reputation and the clichés that go along with it are checked at the door when he checks into this new prison. Instead, when he's assigned to share a cell with Wade, we get an uneasy friendship that develops between the men, and that friendship factors into the outcome.
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