‘Felon’: Val Kilmer’s most overlooked performance
By 2008, Val Kilmer’s career had already dipped considerably from his heyday as an A-list star in the 1990s. His hilarious performance in Shane Black’s 2005 noir black comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang hadn’t performed the career CPR many of his fans had hoped for. Aside from an appearance in the 2006 Denzel Washington/Tony Scott sci-fi action yarn Déjà Vu, this era was defined by grinding out the hard yards in direct-to-video movies even Kilmer would probably struggle to name a few years later.
Among the regrettable likes of Dead Man’s Bounty, Played, Conspiracy, 2:22, and Columbus Day, though, Kilmer starred in a hidden gem that became a cult classic to fans of bruising crime dramas. In Felon, Kilmer played John Smith, a hulking, bespectacled, tattooed multiple murderer serving a life sentence alongside Stephen Dorff’s Wade, a scared blue-collar worker who accidentally killed a burglar while defending his family. The movie was directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who later helmed the similarly gritty action flicks, Snitch, Angel Has Fallen, and Greenland, as well as another harrowing prison drama, Shot Caller.
Naturally, there is a certain macho appeal to a movie like Felon. It’s full of terrifyingly jacked-up prisoners fighting and plotting each other’s deaths at every turn and prison guards who seem so wildly corrupt that it actually borders on farce. Here’s the thing, though, and it’s what elevates Felon above many other similar movies. At its heart, the film is a philosophical examination of the nature of crime and incarceration, as well as an indictment of the inhumane treatment of prisoners at certain facilities.
You see, Felon’s seemingly over-the-top plot concerning guards allowing prisoners to fight and even kill each other while they take bets on the outcome was based on a real scandal that occurred at the California State Prison, Corcoran, in the ’90s.
The performances in the movie are uniformly strong, from Dorff to Harold Perrineau and Sam Shepard. Indeed, Waugh’s ability to solicit lived-in, nuanced performances from his cast is one of his greatest strengths. It’s likely why he has been able to work with the likes of Susan Sarandon, Jon Bernthal, Morgan Freeman, Nick Nolte, and JK Simmons in his later movies.
It’s a shame he never worked with Kilmer again, though, because his performance as the low-key terrifying—yet also empathetic—Smith is the movie’s greatest strength. Kilmer put on weight for the role, and the tattoos, glasses, bushy goatee, and slicked-back grey hair made for one of his most unique looks.
In his first scene, Smith is led into Wade’s cell by the guards, and Wade gives his intimidating new roommate a nervous look. Kilmer’s dead-eyed delivery of the line “You wanna fuck or fight?” is genuinely frightening, and the audience is immediately convinced Smith is going to be the movie’s villain. Over time, though, Kilmer shows us that much of Smith’s demeanour is simply a persona he’s had to develop to survive in the prison system.
Unlike other inmates, Smith has little desire to brawl, cause trouble, or kill anyone. He has incited riots in his previous institutions, but only because the torment of being denied the death penalty causes him to break down from time to time mentally. Now, he wants to be left alone to serve his time writing philosophical manifestos on family and protection – until he forms a friendship with Wade and decides to help him expose the nefarious actions of the guards.
Kilmer’s performance is a revelation. He speaks differently than in most of his movies, finding a different register than ever before. He even alters his breathing patterns, which gives his dialogue a unique rhythm that causes the audience to unconsciously lean forward and listen closely.
He has a few outbursts of emotion and violence, which are entirely convincing, but he mostly plays it reserved and internal, and it works perfectly. What could have been a one-note role becomes a fully fleshed-out character, and when he delivers a pivotal monologue about the reason he murdered 12 people in cold blood, it’s transfixing. Spoiler alert: a couple of them may have had it coming, but his reaction was still pretty damn extreme.
Ultimately, it’s hard not to wish Kilmer had been recognised more for this movie, although to be fair, he was universally praised in its reviews. It wasn’t widely seen upon release, but in recent years, audiences have rediscovered it on DVD and streaming. If you’ve never seen it—and you’ve got a strong stomach—we recommend tracking Felon down to watch the late star deliver his most overlooked performance.
