Felon by Unknown Author

Great prison movie with all the actors great, especially a sober, a little sad Val Kilmer (always liked him). Stephen Dorf also very good. Dramatic, tense, one of the movies I will put in the same range as Shawshank Redemption, An Innocent Man (with Murray Abraham and Tom Selleck) and some other great prison movies.

Good movie. Stephen Dorff does a great job, as does Val Kilmer.
Unlike most movies centered around prison, they don’t throw you into the rape scenes. The threats are certainly implied several times, but most of the violence you’ll see on-screen is just inmate on inmate fighting.
Pretty good mix of plot, action, and a touch of backstory.
You knew where the characters were coming from most of the time.
They could have explained more about what made Lt. Jackson the way he was.
I don’t find a lot of replay value here, though.

Construction business owner Wade Porter(Stephen Dorff)accidentally kills a home intruder and is sentenced to three years in a maximum security prison.There he is cellmates with notorious mass killer John Smith(Val Kilmer)all the while trying to stay under the radar and out of the clutches of sadistic head guard Jackson(Harold Perrinau).
Uncompromising but riveting and brilliantly shaded prison drama is head and shoulders the best release from Sony’s Fight Factory Series.Dorff is terrific as is Kilmer and with a supporting cast numbering Sam Shepard,Anne Archer and crucially Marisol Nichols as Porter’s partner,writer and director Waugh’s pungent,beautifully layered script is given it’s full justice.Felon makes Oz look like a cartoon as it plays out it’s hand of being a subtle indictment of the U.S penal system,a detailed character piece and a brutal actioner with some skill.
Remarkably cliche free, it can be excused going a little crowd pleasing in the final act because Felon is both superb entertainment and a thoughtful examination of how somebody’s humanity and resolve can be severely tested after making one mistake in a largely good life and the consequences that are meted out by a system that only cares about the system.
A knockout of a film and deserves to be better known.
The one extra is a short docu which shows just how far Waugh was prepared to go to make Felon as realistic as possible.

After accidently killing the burglar who broke into his home, even though the burglar was running away, Wade is arrested. After being sentenced to 3 years in a maximum security prison, in SHU I believe, he learns he needs to toughen up. He has to share a cell with mass murder, John, who isn’t as bad as his crime is depicted and who teaches Wade a lesson or two on reality and life!

A friend recommended this to me and I’m glad she did. It was an interesting watch, not what I was expecting at all. I googled it afterwards as I was intrigued and found out it was based on events that happened in a Californian prison in the 90s. The ending was touching and nearly brought a tear to my eyes.

Great movie to watch with my 2 boys,

This film is so incredibly well made I don’t know where to begin. I was so touched and emotionally ravaged by this movie that it almost left me speechless. The performances are top notch. The realism is on point. Its brutal and bleak, but beautiful at the same time. The story is frighteningly simple: a man, just starting a wonderful life with his gorgeous wife and child, winds up having to defend his family from an intruder who breaks into his home in the middle of the night. In the adrenaline-fueled moment, he chases the intruder on his front lawn with a baseball bat and swipes, accidently killing him. Because he was the one doing the chasing, the homicide detectives charge him with murder. The man winds up in prison with the most brutal criminals around: Nazi lowriders (hoping to get “promoted” to Aryan Brotherhood), Latino gangsters, black gangbangers, etc etc. The guards, we soon learn, are just as if not more sadistic than the inmates (led by a chillingly awesome performance by Harold Perrineau, some may remember him as Augustus Hill on OZ -this role is an obvious nod) as they love to stage gladiator fights on the yard. Our hero is clearly in a world that he is alien to but soon starts to succumb to the violence as the White inmates take advantage of him. Future clearly doesn’t look good, until he becomes cellmates with older, prison-wise lifer Val Kilmer (in his best performance since ‘Heat’, in my opinion) who schools him on prison politics and teaches him the ropes.

Shocking, realistic story should be watched by every single American male regardless of race, creed, ethnicity. A wake up call – the scary part is its all so terribly true.

I’ll shut up now. Just do yourself a favor and watch FELON. ASAP.

5 Stars.

Based on events that occurred at Corcoran Prison, California in the 90s. Well worth a watch.