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Mixed or average reviews - based on 10 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 32 Ratings

  • Summary: A loving family man with a promising future, Wade Porter suddenly loses everything when he accidentally kills the burglar who broke into his home. Convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Wade is sentenced to spend the next three years inside a maximum security facility where the rules of society no longer apply. Forced to share a cell with a notorious mass murderer and subjected to brutal beatings orchestrated by the sadistic head prison guard, Wade soon realizes he’s in for the fight of his life and must become the toughest Felon of them all if he’s to survive the block. For what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. And in state prison, only the strongest will survive. (Sony Pictures) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. 75
    Felon's dialogue is overheated and some of its plot twists are preposterous, yet it's still white-knuckle tense, and held together by dozens of small, well-observed moments.
  2. Reviewed by: Stephen Farber
    70
    The most startling performance comes from Val Kilmer as Wade's hardened cellmate, a man who combines bitterness with wisdom.
  3. Mr. Dorff’s hot-wired portrayal of a prisoner under physical and psychic siege gives Felon its emotional through line as Wade’s attitude metamorphoses from stunned disbelief, to terror, to despair, to fury and finally to hope.
  4. Reviewed by: Ed Gonzalez
    60
    Harold Perrineau gives unintentionally comic expression in Felon to the delineation between his character's public and private scruples.

See all 10 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 14
  2. Negative: 0 out of 14
  1. BrookP.
    10
    As usual the critics have missed the opportunity to do their job and report favourably on what is an amazing movie and one of the best I have seen in a long time. Felon is fantastic from beginning to end and does more than justice to the doco film style they use. You are transported to a nightmare that feels so real and emotive you may as well be in a prison for 2 hours. Great characters, great story, great directing. I would highly recomend this movie to anyone who loves quality film making. Brilliant! Expand
  2. Felon surprise me a lot when I first saw it. The movie had a limited release and then it went direct to DVD. It plays a strong message about prison life and it's not a pretty picture.

    Stephen Dorff plays ordinary Wade Porter a working class man with a beautiful wife and son. He receives good news about future plans with his business. He has the perfect life until one night an intruder enters his home to rob. His first mistake was to chase after him outside of the house. He accidentally hits him in the back of the head with a baseball bat thinking he had a gun which he didn't. He gets charged with murder but the district attorney has compassion and lets him serve three years in jail but will be release on good behavior in fifteen months if he keeps that way. He goes to jail and that's when he enters a world that he really can't understand. He goes through a lot of crazy stuff especially a brutal and psychotic correctional officer. He then meets John Smith played by Val Kilmer who is a veteran in prison and at first a little bit distant to him. Throughout Wade's time there they form a somewhat friendship; and Smith starts teaching him ways to tolerate prison life. The key thing that makes this movie work is the performances which are very top notch. Val Kilmer we miss you on the big screen when are you coming back. Thunderheart, Top Gun, Tombstone, The Doors those were awesome movies where you great and hopefully Macgruber doesn't suck. Kilmer plays John Smith to the core and he's very imposing, Kilmer did his research. Dorff played a very sympathetic performance and convinced me all the way. I seriously thought he was a lost cause ever since from being the villain Decon Frost in Blade which he was pretty good. These two actors own the movie and they have great chemistry. The movie loses a potential fifth star because the prison scenes are very brutal and unforgiving and it's not an easy movie to watch. I understand prison life is not easy and I can't say I have experience it, I can only imagined it and hopefully never experience it. However, the movie would make audience feel a shock is coming on every reel when we're suppose to care more about the characters and plot not the next blow to the head. Although Felon surprise me a lot and it's worth to watch for the performances of Kilmer and Dorff.
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  3. JayH.
    5
    Not bad, but I knew in the first scene when I felt he should have been arrested, that I was not on the same wavelength with the film's crew. From there, it is just another prison melodrama, but it is well done. The acting was good. Expand
  4. George
    4
    Cliched and predictable, if well-acted.

See all 14 User Reviews

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