Felon (2008) – New Fish In The Shark Tank

Article first published as Movie Review: Felon (2008) – New Fish In The Shark Tank on Blogcritics.

In the opening sequence of Felon (2008) Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) lives a reasonably good life with his long time girlfriend Laura (Marisol Nichols) and son Michael (Vincent Miller). He has his own business, the couple are planning their wedding, he has just got a small business loan approved and they have a house of their own. One night an intruder slips in through Micheal’s window and Wade goes after him with a baseball bat to protect his family. The intruder has stolen his wallet and Wade scares him off. Instead of doing what he should have, calling the police and staying in the house, Wade chases the intruder out onto the lawn and when the guy turns fumbling for something in his pocket Wade takes a swing. He accidentally kills the intruder.

The basic premise for Felon is that a regular Joe makes one bad decision which winds up having more dire consequences than he could possibly have predicted. Wade gets sentenced to three years for involuntary manslaughter and gets sent to prison. Things start going awry almost immediately, as in on the bus transporting him and a bunch of career criminals to a high security facility.

There are certain harsh truths about prison that I don’t think would surprise anyone at this point, namely that incarceration does not bring out the best in people.
Wade gets caught up in prison politics immediately when the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood gives the murder weapon used on the bus to Snowman (Johnny Lewis) who passes it on to Wade. Because Wade will not tell the prison guards, lead by Lt. Jackson (Harold Perrineau) what he saw he gets sent to ”The Shoe” (SHU), which is Jackson’s domain.
This particular wing of the prison is completely under Lt. Jackson’s control and he seems to be of the opinion that the prisoners are little more than caged animals, which translates into their one hour of rec time in the claustrophobic prison yard being little more than a stage for cage fights that seems to be mostly about pent up aggression and racial hatred.
The guards watch all this from their bird’s nest, the observation tower where they sit in vigil with loaded weapons and wait to see who will come out on top. Mostly they let the fights go on just long enough that someone is bloodied and then they break them up buy firing rubber, real bullets or gas.

Wade is a ”new fish” in the shark tank and he has little or no idea how to navigate the waters. He defends himself when he has to at first and then fights when the brotherhood demands it of him.

The fights themselves are very visceral, a mixture of martial arts and street brawling. They are shot with a small hand-held unit that brings the viewer into the action in an almost disturbingly realistic way and that fits well with the overall feeling of claustrophobia and inevitability.

Apart from all this we also have the second level of the story, which mainly concerns itself with how the main characters actually have a life outside the walls. Wade’s wife struggles with trying to pay the bills and keep their house. Wade tries to keep it together for her and not tell her of the brutality of his prison life. The new guard, Officer Collins (Nate Porter), has just started a family and is trying to accept the extremely brutal attitude of the other guards and even Lt. Jackson has problems on the outside, when his wife divorces him and his son gets into a car accident.

Every character’s external life adds to the pressure that builds inside the walls and all that gets taken to the shark tank where it is played out like gladiatorial games.
There is, however, one truly fascinating character in the mix here, and that’s John Smith (Val Kilmer). He is a calm, unaffiliated, deeply connected and totally nihilistic lifer with a deep abiding love for family and an old biblical take on justice with a genius level IQ to back all that up. It’s a complex character played by an almost unrecognizable Val Kilmer. John Smith has an interesting relationship with a former guard of his, Gordon (Sam Shepherd), played with all the subtlety you can expect from two actors of that caliber. Stephen Dorff also gives a good performance of a man caught up in a veritable whirlwind of bad circumstance. He plays the edgy nervousness of someone literally fearing for his life in a situation he can’t get out of and there is enough character development that it pays to have someone who can find nuance in this otherwise bleak and grimly violent world enough that his actions become understandable.

The writer/director Ric Roman Waugh has done his homework well enough that you don’t find this over the top despite the level of violence. The thing I have some issues with is that the basic premise for this was that our every-man Wade is supposed to be a representation of a collective fear we all have of what could happen if we, due to unfortunate circumstance outside of our control, wind up in prison. And this is a little too heavy-handed for that. I understand the purpose behind the drama, the way the corruption amongst the guards is dealt with, but the heightened drama is not congruent with any kind of realism.

The moral core of any prison movie is always murky at best. This particular tale leaves no stone unturned, no bad deed unpunished and in the end Wade is redeemed and delivered back into the arms of his loving wife and that’s just a little too neat for me. Despite all the depth of character and the focus on interpersonal relationships there is still something a little hollow at the movies core, but luckily the actors’ performances are solid enough that it is still enjoyable to watch.

Felon (2008) directed by Ric Roman Waugh stars Stephen Dorff (Wade Porter), Marisol Nichols (Laura Porter), Vincent Miller (Michael Porter), Anne Archer (Maggie), Larnell Stovall (Viper), Val Kilmer (John Smith), Sam Sheperd (Gordon), Johnny Lewis (Snowman), Harold Perrineau (Lt. Jackson), Shawn Prince (Todd jackson), Chris Browning (Danny Samson), Nick Chinlund (Sgt Roberts), Greg Serano (Officer Diaz), Jake Walker (Warden Harris), Nate Parker (Officer Collins), Eric Gomez (Bodie), Mike Smith (Rooker) and Antonio Leyba (Gonzales).

Public Enemies – Dillinger, fedoras and Tommy guns

Public Enemies (2009) directed by Michael Mann stars Johnny Depp as Dillinger, Jason Clark (Red), Stephen Dorff (Homer Van Meter), Channing Tatum (Pretty Boy Floyd), James Russo (Walter), Christian Bale (Melvin Purvis), Billy Crudup (J. Edgar Hoover), Marion Cotillard (Billie Frechette), Stephen Graham (Baby Face Nelson), Lili Taylor (Sheriff Lillian Holley), Giovanni Ribisi (Alvin Karpis) and Branka Katic (Anna Sage).

It starts with a prison escape. It is fast and vicious and goes badly wrong as one of the escapees gets shot and never makes it out, left hanging on to Dillinger’s hand while dying as the get away car speeds off. That sets the tone.

This is one of those movies that is going to leave people a little puzzled. I have had that feeling quite a few times when watching Michael Mann’s work. I had it with Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995) and with The Insider (1999). Mann has this obvious thing about surface and visuals and it snags your attention, but you have to be cautious about that kind of thing. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

In Heat there is a specific scene, just a flash of seconds really, where Neil (Robert DeNiro) puts his gun down on a glass tabletop. Ten years later I can call up that scene and that sound with almost perfect recall. It’s a matter of texture and precision and a certain indulgence on the directors part, I suppose. It didn’t propel the action forwards or have any meaning in the larger sense, but it still left an imprint on this viewer that won’t go away.

Here we are dealing with a lead character that a lot of people will have heard of, at least to some extent. We also have a cast of spectacularly good actors, like in Heat and Manhunter (which I still say is the better version of that particular narrative, despite The Silence of the Lambs). There is always going to be the sense that the actors weren’t used to their full potential.

It’s 140 minutes long. It could easily have been twice that to my mind.

The era, the 1930s, lends itself beautifully to the big screen. The guys are in suits and fedoras, the girls are in pretty dresses, the cars have running boards and the weapon of choice is the Tommy gun. If you’ve seen the still frames, you know what I mean. This is as visually appealing as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

We are also dealing with “real life”, although many small facts have been altered to fit the narrative here better. Despite that anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the lead character knows that he was shot to death by the FBI, actually on the night of July 22 in 1934. So we know how this is going to end right from the get go.

It sets up a sense of foreboding and inevitability right from that first prison break. That makes this a grim story for a lot of different reasons. There is also less of a glorification of the bank robbers than you would expect. They take hostages on their way out of banks in order to not get shot at by the law, and even though they mostly leave those people unharmed, they still use them as human shields, which must leave them deeply traumatized.

The representatives of the law are likewise not particularly easy to sympathize with. Hoover seems wound extremely tight and his go-to guy, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is a very serious young man. There is a rather unpleasant scene where Dillinger’s girl Billie gets slapped around by a G-man, and that leaves you feeling a little nauseous, despite how delicately it is handled.

When Dillinger’s body was lying in the street outside the Biograph theater, many onlookers dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood as a souvenir. This movie doesn’t do that exactly, but it gives you that same sense of distance, surface and grim interest.

It’s not hard to like a movie as consistent and as visually pleasing as this one. There are some very, very good actors at the core of it, the beautiful and talented Marion Cotillard, Johnny Depp playing a more subtle character than I have seen him do in a while, Christian Bale being a supporting actor and so on and so forth with guys like Billy Graham and Giovanni Ribisi.

If you are looking for a caper movie or an action movie, this is not the thing to watch. This is more of a character study. Many of the locations, like the lodge at Little Bohemia in Manitowish are the actual locations where scenes from Dillinger’s life took place. Rumour has it shell casings from that gunfight between the FBI and Dillinger’s gang can still be found in the woods surrounding the lodge. As a character study, though, it takes liberties with the truth as it has been documented.

I highly recommend it, none the less. I recommend it for the obvious tension in the narrative, for the visuals and the stellar cast. My only caution is that the fewer preconceived notions you have of what kind of movie this is the better you will fare and the more you will enjoy it.

Mule

Shadowboxer

Director Lee Daniels has done some interesting things in this 2005 movie starring Helen Mirren (Rose), Cuba Gooding Jr (Mikey), Vanessa Ferlito (Vicki) and Stephen Dorff (Clayton).

First things first – Helen Mirren is an acompished actress in her own right. She has had a long and varied career already with a wide variety of roles that include everything from Super Intendent Jane Tennison to the Queen to Shakespear and well,  everything in between.  Here she playes a hit woman with an interesting background, and the odd thing is – the role is perfect for her.

Rose is struggling with cancer and the notion that there is a definite end in sight. She has killed indiscriminantely, or so it seems, for most of her life and is hardened to it in a way that’s down right uncanny. At her side she has Mikey, the son of a man she used to “go with” and whom she sort of inherited when his father was killed. Mikey is the Shadowboxer the title refers to.

On what is supposed to be Rose´s last job the duo is sent to dispatch of a local gansters cheating wife and when Rose is actually pointing her gun at the woman, Vicki, she gets out of bed revealling a very prominant belly – and Rose, the perfect predator professional, can’t kill her. The scene might still have ended bloody if it wasn’t for the fact that Vicki’s water breaks and she goes in to labour right there.

Rose decides to take mother and child with her and Mikey simply obeys, because that’s the way things are.

Okay, so this is far fetched and clearly not an easily classified movie. Whoever came up with the casting suggestion of Helen Mirren has definitely made it a much better movie than it could have been. Cuba Gooding Jr also gives a very good performance, unlike what I’ve seen before. He plays Mikey very quietly, not overly expressive, or ganster tough. The relationship between Rose and Mikey is obviously a very complicated one, made more interesting by the fact that she is dying.

Vicki (Vanessa Ferlito) sort of inherits Mikey and his dubious protection, which turns out to be a bit of a double edged sword. Vicki’s ganster husband who put a contract out on her is played by Stephen Dorff. Ferlito is mostly just a damsel in distress, which is somehow made more obvious by the fact that every scene she has with Rose displays the difference between a strong, competent, grown up woman and a pretty face.

Dorff is one of those actors who has given some spectacular performances (Backbeat, for instance) but mostly I feel he’s been stuck with the bad boy psycho wild card roles. He does that here too, and does it unusually well, but it is not by any means a surprise to see him acting out. Although we do get to see a bit more of him than we bargained for…

On that note, by the way, there seems to be a undercurrent of worship of the male form, which becomes noticable in the slow motion camera panning over Cuba Gooding Jr in the shower, or his strip tease seduction scene.

Estetically this movie borrows soft lens shots from the tritest of romances and a looming, dark atmosphere from introspective film noir and somehow makes it work. It is very pleasing to the eye and you get the feeling there is a definite thought behind every shot, not only in terms of story telling, but also when it comes to the visual aspect.

There is also a philosphical aspect, it deals with how violence is inherited and perhaps inate and with what that can do to people, but it is not dealt with as if it were a moral tale, luckily. You cannot condemn and glorify at the same time without it leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the spectator, and this does not do that.

One point of critiscism could be that it tries to do a little too much, that it is a little too ambitious, but it still works. If you want straight up action this is probably not the best movie to choose. So it is one of those movies easily classified by all the things it is not.

Well worth watching none the less. I mean Helen Mirren sneaking in to the house of the first mark barefoot with a big gun? You have to love that.

Mule