This movie directed by Rick Roman Waugh, a stuntman on Tango & Cash, Universal Soldier, True Romance, Hard Target, Last Action Hero, The Last Of the Mohicans, Lethal Weapon 2, They Live, Ghost Dad(?).....Just to name a few. So with a pretty neat script, a camera or 2, a prison set, Val Kilmer & Stephen Dorff. This fella has crafted a decent prison movie.
Stephen Dorff plays a mid 30’s family man, he has a young son, a caring wife, a nice house; he’s just secured a business loan to expand his construction business. Set up nicely for something real shitty to happen, and for sure it does. He hears an intruder in his house one night and takes a baseball bat and chases the guy off, but once the robber is in retreat, Dorff takes a swing right to the back of the melon, knocks the robber down and kills him instantly. This is quite a heavy moment from a character point of view, my only complaint with this particular part was the actual impact between the baseball bat and the head wasn’t hard enough in a filmatic sense, they should’ve used a bigger and louder sound effect, and cut it in a way to really show blistering impact, it was a a little weak, but the guy is lying dead on the floor and Dorff stands their crapping himself.
The authorities are sympathetic with his situation, but Dorff can’t make some sort of self defence plea for reasons explained in the movie, the guy has to be punished. He is advised by his attorney that the best course of action is to plead guilty to involuntary man-slaughter, which will carry a sentence of 3 years in prison, it’s really the best he can get. So he does as he was advised, makes the guilty plea and is sentenced to 3 years.
The impact that this whole set up had on me was actually quite profound. The guy was protecting his family and because of some BS law, he has to pay the price. The robber lost his life, but you know, you pick that line of work you got to expect to give up your life in some capacity somewhere down the line. But the main point here being how well this set up worked. Brief character building was just enough to really make you feel sorry for Dorffs character, his family, and the situation he’s now found himself in really jiggled the old empathy gland.
There is an incident during a transfer between prisons, and Dorff is framed for a pretty brutal knifing that happens on the journey. He still doesn’t understand how prison works but he does realise that you don’t snitch on people, especially the most bad-ass evil dude in the prison that actually did the killing. Dorff and pretty much the rest of the cons on the journey end up in the SHU (Secure Housing Unit). This is where the movie really takes a turn and shows us more of the world that Dorff’s character will be a part of for the next 3 years.
It doesn’t just take a turn, Felon becomes Gladiator in Prison in the 21st century. The SHU is run by a sadistic guard by the name of Lieutenant Jackson played by Harold Perrineau (Lost). The prisoners spend 23 hours a day in their concrete walled cells, and 1 hour a day in the yard where inmates are allowed/forced to fight for their lives for the entertainment of the corrupt guards. This gets Dorff into more and more trouble; he gets blackmailed by the guards to testify against fellow inmates, threatened with death, an elongated sentence, all kinds of bad shit. But he manages to toughen up and learn about the real side of prison mentality and politics.
As things are looking pretty bleak for Dorff, he gets a new cell mate, a brutal serial killer called John Smith, played by Val Kilmer. The chemistry between the two of them is a little wild at first but they become friends, Kilmer teaches him about the way of the prison, touches on the subjects of love, family, honour, he kind of sits on the fence between hardened serial killer and philosophical family man. We learn the reasons why John Smith became a killer, revenge for the death of his family. He is a well respected, tough, feared individual, but from the audience’s point of view, he brings a degree of hope and confidence which is something we seem to have completely lost as Dorff’s characters life continues to crumble piece by piece in front of our very eyes.
Dorff’s wife makes vists, she explains to him the financial turmoil they are in, he tells her to sell the house, use the business loan to get by, and whilst all this is going on outside the prison, Dorff is busy inside preparing for his next battle in the yard, which could always result with another extension on his sentence. When it seems that all hope is lost, his family is falling apart, he is on the verge of being killed. With the help of Kilmer, they formulate a plan expose the corruption of the SHU guards.
I absolutely love prison movies, and I’m a sucker for a good ol’ prison doc too. Once you get past all the egos, attitudes, violence, tattoos and shit, you actually have a political system in which you must abide by the rules, whoever makes them, usually multiple sets of rules, and become a member of society any way that you can. We know that Stephen Dorffs character isn’t a criminal; we also know how Kilmers character was driven to murder by events unimaginable. They are both deep down good people, just like us (assuming you’re not a criminal) fighting to survive in this world. Felon’s events and emotions they provoke are all very human and relatable to somebody who considers anybody in this world could at some point be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, even when all you are doing is trying to protect your family.
So prison gangs, prisoners, killers, psychopaths, usually have one thing in common. They’re hard as nuts strong bastards. Some of the matchups in which Dorff finds himself in the yard, he totally goes in as the underdog and usually takes a beating, but he always prevails. He nails some huge rough looking MF’s. To be honest I didn’t get this with the movie, they made Stephen Dorff out as a complete fighter capable of taking out anyone, any size, anytime. No Way, he was a skinny dude with a 6 pack taking on 300lb meatheads with a six pack in their god dam fists! I think Dorff should’ve been kept out of the fights more than be involved in them. Yeah he needed to get a beatd-own from time to time, but no way would a dude his size survive as long as he did against some of the huge meat heads he was up against.
Bare knuckle fist fight prison boxing, It’s good to watch when shot so cinematically, this movie is violent. But the action takes a back seat to some pretty well structured character drama Felon has to offer. The highlight of the movie for me was the relationship between the 2 star players. I found their conversations just as thrilling as the fights, or the retaliation against the corruption which was pretty much in plentiful supply.
With the hand held camera approach fairly common place in favour of tidy static, steady cam or dolly type shots, this very modern and popular technique for portraying gritty pseudo journalistic realism is used frequently, but it never got in the way of my enjoyment like it does with some films. The action is nicely cut, the fights are brutal, the story simple and engaging, the characterisation developed gradually and well, I really enjoyed felon. It provoked emotions in me and satisfied my occasional yearn for a solid prison based actioner.
