Published 2016 on Down Under Flix
Director: Matthew Saville
Director: Matthew Saville
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Jai Courtney, Tom Wilkinson, Melissa George
Joel
Edgerton, on top of being a sturdy actor in local and international fare
ranging from Animal Kingdom to
the Star Wars prequels,
has emerged as one hell of a writer in recent years. He co-wrote the contemporary noir gem The Square, co-conceived the
post-apocalyptic road thriller The
Rover, and scripted this fine cut of moral quandary, Felony.
Edgerton
headlines Felony as
Malcolm Toohey, a police detective on the cusp of decimating an organised crime
ring. When driving home after a long evening of festive boozing, he
accidentally hits a young boy on a bicycle. He calls 000 (Australia’s 911
for overseas readers) but tells them he only found the injured child lying
on the road. Veteran detective Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) discreetly helps
Toohey bluff his way through the scene, but Summer’s young partner Jim Melic
(Jai Courtney) senses something rotten in Denmark and investigates.
I
remember an episode of the Australian roundtable show The Panel many years ago
that brought up the glut of locally produced police and hospital shows
populating Australian television at the time, and someone cracked a joke about
the next logical step being a show called Cops and Doctors. While this trend was mainly
relegated to television (see Police
Rescue, Blue
Murder, Wildside, Water Rats, Stingers, All Saints, Young Lions, Blue Heelers, and The Flying Doctors, to name
just a few) rather than film, this does explain in a roundabout way why Felony – which features
both cops and a
number of scenes in a hospital – feels somewhat more familiar than those other
electric Edgerton-scripted films mentioned above.
Despite
this, Felony shares
a number of key qualities with both The
Square and The
Rover: a single crime (arson in The Square, car theft in The Rover, and this film’s
titular felony) that triggers the events that follow; a slow burning escalation
of the dramatic stakes and a mounting sense of dread; earthbound thrills in
recognisable, authentic environments; and a Larry Cohen-esque
aptitude for squeezing from a neat concept its various
narrative and cinematic possibilities.
Director
Matthew Saville, an award-winning director with some quality television
and film credits (Noise, The Slap, Cloudstreet), also squeezes a
great performance out of Jai Courtney. Courtney’s had the misfortune of
starring in some lousy American waste produce, including the
mediocre sequels A Good
Day to Die Hard and Terminator:
Genisys (where the buff star was severely miscast as
the intense, wiry time-traveler Kyle Reese, a role originated by Michael
Biehn in The Terminator)
and the Frankensteinian monster that is I, Frankenstein. In doing so, he’s become
a cover boy for generic, bland white leading men in generic, bland white
blockbuster films. But he’s done solid work as a utility player in smaller
flicks like The Water
Diviner, and he’s great here. Courtney’s imposing size and
innate awkwardness are a good fit for Melic, and his surface blandness and
shininess are harnessed and subverted nicely as the film progresses and
the character, outwardly ambitious and idealistic, betrays some wrinkles of
weirdness and delusion. Edgerton is likewise good as a cop forced by
circumstance to violate his moral code, Melissa George does nice work as his
conflicted wife, and Wilkinson, as he’s done on a number of occasions,
burnishes his damaged authority figure with rumpled integrity and pathos.
Felony's not as bold or
daring as some other Edgerton-scripted joints, but it’s a polished
procedural with strong performances. A solid exhale on the breathalyzer…
Ben Kooyman
Ben Kooyman