Shot Caller (2018) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama | Thriller

Shot Caller follows the harrowing, often heartrending journey of successful businessman Jacob Harlon (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who is transformed into Money a stoic, ruthless prison gangster after a DUI sends him down the rabbit hole of the American prison system. As he navigates the brutality of his new home, adapting to its violent codes of ethics and rites of passage that will ensure his survival, he slowly loses his previous identity and his relationship to his former life, including his wife and son. The grip of his new family, the prison gang, extends beyond the prison walls. Upon his release, chased by law enment and threatened by his incarcerated "protectors," Money must orchestrate one last dangerous crime. All is not what it seems. The ruthless process of fulfilling his obligations also becomes his path to sacrifice, retribution, and self-definition.

Storyline: White-collar business professional, happily married accidentally commits a crime. Sentenced to prison time, he must adjust and learn the ways of prison life. Throughout this, he struggles to do what's best for his family on the outside. The choices he makes in prison will have major repercussions, both to himself and his family, if he makes the wrong one. Written by Benjamin J Thompson

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, October 18, 2017 Though it's largely forgotten today, in early 1972 a made for television movie which was on my radar because it had been shot in my then hometown of Salt Lake City was broadcast which created quite a critical furor, ultimately going on to receive a trio of Emmy nominations, including a win for director Tom Gries. The Glass House was based on a story by Truman Capote, and relayed the harrowing tale of an upper middle class college professor (Alan Alda, just a few months before he became a bonafide television star in M*A*S*H) who is convicted of manslaughter and who is sent to the slammer, being pretty spectacularly unprepared for the horrors which awaited him in the institutional life of a "modern" American prison. The Glass House has recurred kind of oddly throughout my life. I was a kid when it was shot in and around Salt Lake City (the prison itself is in Draper, somewhat south of Salt Lake), but for some reason the producers invited a lot of VIPs, among them my father, out to the Utah State Penitentiary (where Gary Gilmore was famously executed by a firing squad after The Glass House was produced) to see the filming and hobnob with the cast and crew. My Dad was completely unimpressed with the proceedings but dutifully reported everything he had seen and everyone he had met to his starry eyed son. Years later I weirdly ended up winning an eBay auction held by actor Kristoffer Tabori, who was a co-star in the film, which brought memories of this childhood event back to life. Now even more decades later, The Glass House rose from the dim mists of my memory again as I watched Shot Caller, since it deals with at least some of the same ideas and even some character "evolutions", though I have to say as fascinating as the film often is, it's perhaps too farfetched to resonate as strongly as The Glass House did for many back in the seventies. Shot Caller is, like The Glass House, built around the conceit of an upwardly mobile male, in this case Jacob Harlon (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who is convicted of involuntary manslaughter after he imbibes a few too many drinks and ends up in a fiery car crash that kills his best friend. Structurally, the film is quite interesting, beginning with scenes of Harlon, who has taken the nickname Money in stir, as a hardscrabble prisoner covered with tattoos and writing a note to his son. This introduction to Harlon (and/or Money, as the case may be) is intentionally misleading, since most audience members are going to assume they're dealing with a "lowlife" who is probably a gang member and who deserves whatever fate he's been handed. That disconnect between audience perception and "reality" may well be the most interesting thing about Shot Caller, a film that may simply be too outlandish for its own good, despite some really impressive performances from a large cast that also includes Lake Bell as Harlon's ex-wife and Benjamin Bratt as Sheriff Sanchez, a lawman whose life intersects with Harlon's (interestingly, The Glass House also profiled a guard who was, like Alda's character, a newcomer to the prison).

While the structural artifice of Shot Caller is completely understandable, it may actually work against the feeling of reality the film is attempting to create, since there is such a huge disparity between Harlon and his ultimate identity as Money. Money is more or less a skinhead, with "skin art" documenting his belief in family (and race), and he's obviously no one to mess with. That just doesn't seem to jibe with a well to do suburbanite who is happily ensconced with a lovely wife and adorable young son. Of course part of the thesis proffered by writer-director Ric Roman Waugh (who considers this film a follow up of sorts to his Felon, which offers much the same basic plot and, yes, character "evolution") is that the corrosive atmosphere of prison forces a basically good man to recreate himself as a street tough. Perhaps if Harlon hadn't been quite so well to do this might have been an easier transition to document.

Because the central conceit of this decent and basically honorable man most definitely Breaking Bad (so to speak) may be a bit hard to swallow (as it was for me), linked subplots involving both what amounts to the schoolyard (i.e., prison) bully, the appropriately named Beast (Holt McCallany), as well as other elements involving Money's exploits as a free man with Shotgun (Jon Bernal) and Howie (Emory Cohen) may similarly strike some viewers as a little improbable. That said, this is a film with some absolutely blistering performances all around, and the subtextual angst that permeates the film is virtually palpable a lot of the time.

The disjunctive way Waugh lays out this tale is in and of itself an experience in feeling at least somewhat as askew as Harlon does in his new environment, and the film arguably waits too long to divulge some of the underlying reasons for the character's transformation into Money. The brutalizing aspect of a life in prison is documented with pretty intense fury, and is brought home by a committed cast (which includes a lot of former felons as extras). There's an almost startling veracity to the underlying story Waugh is telling, and there's absolutely nothing amiss in Coster-Waldau's accounting of his character's choices, but the film's reliance on a metamorphosis that may simply push the believability envelope a bit too far will probably determine how each individual reacts to the overall tale, and therefore will similarly determine how strongly this film will impact each individual viewer.

For me personally Shot Caller was a near miss. A lot about this film is very impressive, but I just couldn't quite get past my incredulity over the transformation experienced by this one upstanding member of society. Yes, it's probably decently "explained", ultimately at least, that is, if you buy the fact that the explanation is attempting to rationalize what is by any measure a pretty startling metamorphosis. Performances are very strong and technical merits are excellent. Recommended.

[CSW] -4.1- This is NOT your usual prison movie! A lot of research went into how the prison system is actually run by convicts and not the prison guards and administration. It shows how the American prison system is creating even worse criminals. There seems to be little chance for someone to just do their time and get out cleanly when they are thrust into a kill-or-be-killed criminal warehouse, where they either run with a gang for self-preservation or wind up being someone's punching bag or worse. Why would you put a stock broker who got drunk and made a mistake in with violent rapist and murderers? You are asking to create a smart bad guy! But in this case he is not only smart but big enough to take on those that mean to do him harm or hold the power to hurt him or his family. Some have objected a mere stock broker like the central character couldn't survive or be of use to a hard core prison gang. Little do they know prison gangs are highly profitable, with some leaders owning luxury estates in Bel Air. Think of them as investment bankers with swastika and La Raza tattoos. Note the scene where 'Money' has amassed $170,000 during six years of imprisonment. I rarely see a prison movie or any action movie with depth like this one... it's cold blood and intense. And all the violence and cunning serve a noble purpose.
[V4.5-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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