Felony is a film which is directed by Matthew Saville and is written by Joel Edgerton who also stars in the film with Jai Courtney, Tom Wilkinson, Melissa George and Sarah Roberts. It’s a crime thriller that takes us into a drink driving type of incident which occurs when a boy is hit by a car driven by a police detective who is helped by his friends in the police force to cover it up.
Felony Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL7vf-TqHPo
The plot of the movie is very easy to follow from the beginning to the end in Felony. You can see it all in the trailer above, but basically what goes on is that Malcolm Toohey is driving along late at night and runs over a kid on the street. He stops to help him out, I don’t want to spoil it but a friend in the force helps him cover it up but when an honorable policemen becomes suspicious of the incident things start getting tense between the three.
I don’t know what to make of this movie really but I felt like it was the type of movie someone might show when you’re in school when you’re supposed to be learning about a topic. I think this is probably a good movie to show people the consequences of drink driving, which can cause an accident on the road. We see a lot of the fallout once the victims family comes in and the amount of guilt that the offender has over the course of the film. It’s perfect for this topic and I don’t know many other movies that even address the issue, but Felony does and it does it well.
It’s not the best movie of the year, some of it is a little bit slow and some of it is a bit predictable. It’s also a bit depressing to watch and while I do appreciate the differentiation it has with this topic that is rarely addressed on film it’s not necessarily a feel good movie or something you’d go to that I would call fun. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie because Felony is definitely something that’s good, it’s just… well like something you would have to watch at school because it’s got a serious topic and issues that it deals with and spends a long time explaining all of them. Don’t drink and drive, don’t drive when tired and always tell the truth! But it’s because of these issues and the time it spent with them which I thought was done very well, that I think Felony will be something memorable.
I did however like the screenplay from Joel Edgerton and felt that it actually was pretty solid all the way through. There was careful attention to detail when it came to the character development particularly for Malcolm Toohey (Joel Edgerton) which is always good to have in a film. There were also interesting characters to watch such as Detective Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) who was very interesting to observe. Jai Courtney did well in the movie but I thought his character was just way to predictable though. Scenes where it had Joel, Jai and Tom altogether interacting were great though.
The directing from Matthew Saville was good and the tone of the film I thought was just right for the topic it was addressing. The pacing was good and the camera angles were all thought out quite well. The film was overall very well put together, but just as something that I was watching I just didn’t feel much suspense. It just sort of went on and on and then it ended. I felt it was okay in the end and while it didn’t blow me away it was good enough.
Overall I felt that this was a good film that addressed probably a topic that has had very little attention in the world of movies. The acting was all well done and the team looked like they put a lot of effort into making this movie something special. While not really a feel good entertaining movie it is interesting to watch and does make you think about the type of felony that was committed.
