FELON

The movie brings up a lot of heavy and thought provoking issues, it's emotionally exhausting to watch, and that is exactly why it's brilliant.

Felon is one of those movies I blindly put on hold at the library based on the fact that it was a new release and had a decent cast. As it sat there on my hold list, I had frequent thoughts of cancelling it. Felon... what is that? Why do I want that? Even after it came in, I thought, "why do I have this?" And then I turned it on. From the opening scene to the end credits I was GLUED to the screen. Felon is easily one of the best movies of 2008.

The film gets off to a running start as Wade (Stephen Dorff) and Laura Porter (Marisol Nichols) are awakened by an intruder. Not only is he rifling through their belongings, he's horrifyingly close to their sleeping child. Wade does what any normal person would do—he grabs a baseball bat and chases the man out of his house and onto the lawn. At the last moment, the intruder turns. Fearing he will be shot, Wade swings the bat. The intruder dies from head trauma, but Wade's problems are only just beginning. It seems that the intruder wasn't armed after all, and by the time Wade hit him, he was no longer on the Porter's property.

At this point we are only a few minutes into the movie, and already things have taken a sickening twist. In the blink of an eye, Wade has gone from a man protecting his home and his family to a murderer. Even if he's only charged with involuntary manslaughter, even if he's only punished as a technicality, Wade's life will never be the same again.

Though sentenced to only three years in prison with the promise of early parole, things continue to spiral out of control for Wade. He takes the blame for a scuffle on the bus en route to prison, so there's a black mark on his record from the first day of his sentence. In addition to the usual indignities of prison life, Wade must deal with corrupt guards and learn to negotiate "the yard". He's lucky to make it through the day without taking the fall for someone else's bad behavior, getting knifed in the gut by a fellow prisoner, or shot in the back by a guard. This says nothing of the troubles at home.

On the outside, Marisol is struggling to keep the family afloat while Wade is incarcerated. Though she fully intends to stick with him, it's far more difficult than she thought. In Wade's absence, his business goes under and Marisol is forced to give up their house and move in with her disapproving mother (Anne Archer). Visiting Wade is a draining and humiliating experience, and it each time Marisol sees him it seems as though his sentence has grown longer and his problems more serious. Worryingly, he's starting to act less and less like the man she loves, and more and more like a hardened felon.

What makes the movie truly compelling is that the nightmare unfolding onscreen could happen to any one of us. Watching Wade's story progress, it's easy to see how the prison system can ruin good men even as it attempts to reform the bad. The only things that save Wade are Marisol's faith, the guidance of his cell mate John (Val Kilmer), and the decency of Gordon (Sam Shepard) a retired prison employee. Without any one of them, Wade would have been ruined.

In addition to its genuinely riveting story line, Felon is buoyed by its excellent cast. Val Kilmer gives a quietly wrenching performance as John Smith, a somewhat inscrutable man who bears a soul-crushing secret. (Seriously, I'm thinking an Oscar nod would have been totally appropriate.) Through Wade and John we learn that every felon has a story, and that sometimes it's the victims who are made to pay for a crime. The movie brings up a lot of heavy and thought provoking issues, it's emotionally exhausting to watch, and that is exactly why it's brilliant.