Felon: Review By Fallenlords

Films about prison tend to be either about escaping or violence. Now 'Felon' is no different, it takes violence as the main core of the film. But it differs to your normal gang related/race related fare.

Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) is a business and family man that finds a burglar in his house. Protecting his family he picks up a baseball bat and chases the burglar out of the house, when he thinks the burglar is reaching for a gun he smacks him down. Unfortunately for him he kills the burglar and because technically he is outside the house, the burglar had left the residence and posed no threat, he is placed on a ‘murder’ charge. His lawyer strikes up a deal and this gets plea-bargained down to involuntary manslaughter, with a sentence of three years in a maximum security prison. Considering the time already served and with good behavior he should be out in a year and half.

But Wade’s life is about to take a turn for the worst when he gets involved, through not fault of his own, with an incident on the bus heading towards the prison. He is given an option by the guards, tell them what happened or he is going to be spending the rest of his time in the max security wing with all the hard cases. Wade keeps his mouth shut and ends up it what can only be described as a living hell.

All the hard balls of the prison are placed in this wing. At exercise time the guards allow the inmates to work out their frustrations on one another. As they will fight anyway, why not let them and then have the odd bet to see who wins. The guards are all under the orders of Lt Jackson (Harold Perrineau) who can only be described as one sadistic son of a bitch.

When a lifer John Smith (Val Kilmer) is moved to Wade’s cell from another prison, because of causing riots, Wade is schooled in prison politics and the way things work. Wade a reasonable man is faced with fighting for his life on a regular basis.

The incident on the bus eventually comes back to bite Wade and extend his sentence, his life then disintegrates. His wife doesn’t understand what he is becoming, and he can’t explain what he has to do in order to survive. One thing is for sure he can’t survive without her, yet she can’t afford to wait for an endless amount of time.

John Smith eventually comes up with a plan to expose the goings-on in the prison and hopefully help Wade get his life back. But the plan is risky to say the least and means pressing the buttons of Lt Jackson. Who is not a man to be messed with at all!

As prison dramas go this was reasonably enjoyable, Stephen Dorff played his part well and Val Kilmer was great in the supporting role. This is a story about survival and what a normal person would do in a completely unnatural situation, how quickly people can adapt in order to survive.

This story is well told and well put together, you feel sympathetic for Wade Porter because he seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he is initially sentenced, he was protecting his own - his wife and child. I think most people will be able to relate to this situation.

John Smith (Val Kilmer) was an interesting character, a man who wanted death row for his crimes. Yet having that refused and sentenced to life, he is determined the system will not break him. A nasty piece of work in one respect when you hear about the number of people he killed. But then when you hear of the reasons behind it, which are graphic and disturbing, you do wonder if you might do a similar thing given the circ*mstances.

There is a lot of violence in this film but it shows the brutality of the system, more so than anything. The fact that Lt Jackson the guard in charge is more sadistic than the inmates, who will kill you as soon as look at you, does start you wondering who is in prison? For the most part the inmates obviously, but aren’t the guards as well?