Metacritic Film

Felon

Starring Stephen Dorff, Val Kilmer, Sam Shephard, Harold Perrineau, and Marisol Nichols

MPAA RATING: R for brutal violence, pervasive language and brief nudity

Stage 6 Films
Drama
minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters July 18, 2008

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)

WRITTEN BY
Ric Roman Waugh

DIRECTED BY
Ric Roman Waugh

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

58 / 100

Critic Reviews

75	The Onion (A.V. Club) 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.
70	The New York Times 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.
70	The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber The most startling performance comes from Val Kilmer as Wade's hardened cellmate, a man who combines bitterness with wisdom.
70	Variety Stephen Dorff's powerhouse perf as an ordinary Joe trapped behind bars with warring ethnic psychopaths propels Felon well ahead of its expose/exploitation brethren while still avoiding the pious learning curves of Frank Darabont's prestige prison dramas.
63	TV Guide Kilmer and Dorff, who was also an executive producer, immerse themselves in difficult roles.
60	Village Voice Ed Gonzalez Harold Perrineau gives unintentionally comic expression in Felon to the delineation between his character's public and private scruples.
50	New York Post A good cast and disciplined direction add some distinction to Ric Roman Waugh's Felon, which is basically the old tale about an innocent man corrupted by a stay in prison.
50	Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen Felon is not a total bust. What does work is because of the strength of the actors. Dorff brings a visceral sense of desperation to his performance, though he does tend to go too big too quickly. Kilmer gives the film its center as an alien, still presence amid the chaos around him.
50	Entertainment Weekly Val Kilmer, as a polite horn-rimmed sociopath with a heart of gold, keeps showing up to drop Nietzschean pensées.
40	New York Daily News There are times when a Kilmer performance is like watching a clock move: well-timed and oddly compelling, even though it's totally predictable. That's the case with Felon, which doesn't belong to Kilmer but which he steals anyhow.

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