Nick Chinlund | Through the Shattered Lens

FELON is a movie that caught my attention when I was scrolling through Val Kilmer’s filmography on IMDB. I was looking for a movie and performance that seemed worthy of his talents, and this one stood out to me based on its high rating. It was directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who has helmed several solid Gerard Butler films over the last decade, including ANGEL HAS FALLEN (2019), GREENLAND (2020), and KANDAHAR (2023). I decided to go ahead and check it out on a lazy, and hot, Sunday afternoon in Arkansas.

Stephen Dorff stars as Wade Porter, a man whose life takes a serious turn when he kills a burglar who has broken into his home. He’s sentenced to 3 years in prison for manslaughter and soon learns just how difficult it is to survive in prison. In what may be the best performance of his career, Dorff’s transformation from business-minded family man to brutal, prison survivor is incredible. As hard as he becomes, you never stop seeing the decent man trapped beneath the hardened exterior that prison forces on him. Val Kilmer plays John Smith, a mysterious lifer whose emotional scars and wisdom prove invaluable to Porter’s survival. While Smith may never go down as one of Kilmer’s most well-known characters, he gives an excellent, understated performance that proved he could still command the screen.

After looking through the IMDB profile for FELON, I expected a gritty prison drama with plenty of violence. You do get that, but I was surprised by how much the film affected me emotionally. This movie sets up a scenario that proves how quickly an ordinary guy’s life can be destroyed by one difficult situation, and then how hard it is to hold on to your humanity when your new world is completely built on violence.

Director Waugh is able to keep the stakes high from the very beginning of the film to its end. Porter not only has to fight with all he has to survive behind the walls of the prison, but he also has to do whatever he can to to hold his family together, especially when it looks like his wife Laura (Marisol Nichols) is going to divorce him. There is a lot of violence behind the prison walls, but it feels ugly rather than entertaining, which adds meaning and a layer of depth to the film. I want to shout out Harold Perrineau, who I know from the TV series LOST. He is absolutely chilling as the evil prison lieutenant Jackson, who lost his own humanity years earlier and who now treats inmates as nothing more than pawns in his own ugly game. His performance is especially affecting when coupled with Dorff’s decent character.

Val Kilmer put his name on a lot of movies later in his career that aren’t that great. FELON isn’t a classic, but it’s a very strong film. After enjoying their work together in THUNDERHEART, I really enjoyed seeing Kilmer work again with Sam Shepard, who plays his last remaining friend here. It’s a wonderful bonus for a low budget film from 2008. What stayed with me most, though, is the film’s reminder that justice and fairness aren’t always the same thing. Wade goes to prison wanting to quietly serve his time so he can move on with his life, but he quickly learns that survival often depends on abandoning the ideals that allow him to be a man of integrity in the real world. It’s a somewhat unsettling thought that has stuck with me after the movie ended.

FELON is a film that’s probably never received the attention it deserved, but it’s a good prison drama. Anchored by excellent performances from Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer, it provides an emotionally compelling story that’s well worth a watch. If you’re a fan of Val Kilmer like I am, this one’s a forgotten gem!

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were suffering from insomnia last night, at around two a.m., you could have turned over to Flix and watched the 1998 film Frogs For Snakes.

And if you were suffering from insomnia, watching Frogs For Snakes would probably have been a good idea because this film is amazingly dull. In fact, I am not sure that I have the words to express to you just how tedious Frogs For Snakes truly was. It may be necessary for me to go back to school and learn how to speak in a dead language in order for me to express the boredom that I felt while watching Frogs For Snakes.

And yes, I realize that I’m talking about an obscure film that was released nearly 20 years ago and it might seem kind of petty to, at this late date, make a big deal about how terrible this film was.

But seriously, Frogs For Snakes was really, really bad. In fact, it was disturbing to think that a film this bad could have actually been made. It was even more disturbing to consider that this film was apparently given a theatrical release and, all these years later, still pops up on cable so that it can proudly display its overwhelming mediocrity.

Now, I’m going to tell you what Frogs For Snakes is about and you’re going to think, “That actually sounds like it might be kind of interesting.” Don’t be fooled! The film may sound interesting but it’s not.

Frogs for Snakes takes place in a stylized, neo-noir version of New York City. Eva Santana (Barbara Hershey) is an aging actress who claims to have quit the business, though it’s clear that it’s more a case of the business quitting her. She talks about leaving New York and raising her son in a better environment. However, until she gets around to leaving, she’s making ends meet by working as a waitress at a diner owned by the kind-hearted Quint (Ian Hart). And, of course, when she’s not waitressing, she’s working as a debt collector for her ex-husband, a loan shark named Al Santana (Robbie Coltrane).

That’s right, this actress has a gun and she uses it frequently. However, because Eva is good at heart, she rarely kills anyone. Instead, she just shoots them in the foot and tells them to pay back their loans while they lay on the floor and scream in agony. (All that agonized screaming got pretty old after a while.)

As for Al, he’s not just a loan shark. He’s a theatrical impressario. He’s planning on putting on a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. He promises his driver a role in American Buffalo on the condition that the driver assassinate Eva’s new boyfriend (John Leguizamo, of course).

Soon, actors all over New York are literally killing to get a role in Al’s play. Meanwhile, Eva just wants to retire and get out of New York but first, she has to do one last job for Al…

In between all the killing, the characters frequently launch into monologues that have been lifted from other films. John Leguizamo does a Brando imitation. Lisa Marie (Tim Burton’s ex, not yours truly) delivers the cuckoo clock speech from The Third Man. A suggestion for aspiring filmmakers: if you’re going to make a bad film, don’t remind your audience that they could be watching The Third Man instead.

Anyway, the plot sounds interesting but none of the potentially intriguing ideas are explored. I imagine that the film was meant to be a satire of Off-Broadway ruthlessness but ultimately, the film is just another tediously violent indie film from the 90s. This is one of those movies where nobody can do anything without spending an excessive amount of time talking about it beforehand and, when things do turn violent, it’s the worst type of quirky, sadistic, drawn-out, “look how crazy we are” violence.

There’s a scene towards the end of the film where Al shoots a group of people in a bar. This is intercut with clips from the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. As Al leave, he shoots the TV showing Battleship Potemkin and, I have to say, that really annoyed me. Seriously, just as a bad filmmaker should not remind people that they could be watching The Third Man, he shouldn’t invite them to compare his film to Battleship Potemkin unless he’s willing to back up the comparison. When Al shot the TV, I found myself hoping that Sergei Eisenstein would pop up and shoot him.

Frogs for Snakes is one of the worst films that I’ve ever seen. It may, in fact, be the worst but I would need to rewatch Ted 2 before I said that for sure. But, if you have insomnia, Frogs For Snakes will at least put you to sleep.