Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Felony Blu-ray Movie Review

It would be a crime to miss this excellent movie.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 3, 2015

Bad things happen to good people. It's a fact of life that doesn't ever get lumped in with "death" and "taxes" but the truth of the matter is that if one lives long enough, something in life will arise to challenge the very moral fabric and constructed character of every individual. The lucky ones will get off relatively easy, maybe simply falling on a down season of financial hard times or enduring a difficult illness from which they eventually recover. For others, however, the shadow of a mistake can haunt for the rest of one's life, can drain the life-force from an individual and rewrite a life's course in an instant. In Felony, an Australian Drama film from longtime television Director Matthew Saville and based on Actor Joel Edgerton's script, a character must come to terms with the truth and subsequent cover-up of his involvement in an accident that's threatening the life of an innocent young boy. It's a wonderful character study that's physically downplayed to focus on the forward emotions and character depth that defines it, resulting in a rousing success of deep, intimate characterization and one of the better films of its kind.

Trouble.

Detective Malcolm Toohey (Joel Edgerton) is shot in the line of duty but saved thanks to his bullet proof vest. A night of hard celebratory drinking, however, leads to dire consequences. Mal, driving under the influence, strikes a young man, knocks him off his bicycle, and renders him unconscious. He calls for help but feigns innocence when authorities arrive, claiming he found the boy on the road and spotted another car driving off in the distance. When cops Carl (Tom Wilkinson) and Jim (Jai Courtney) arrive on the scene, the former rushes to protect Mal but the latter senses that there's more to Mal's story than he is claiming. As the young boy fights for his life, Mal must fight with himself, struggling with a truth bottled up tightly inside of him, with Carl trying to protect him on one side and Jim working every angle to prove his guilt on the other.

While Felony's core story attributes creep into familiar territory, the movie works because of its intimacy, attention to detail, and effortlessly high quality performances. The picture plays with a deliberate cadence, a somewhat slowly developing and evolving portrait that takes place over several days, several days in which the truth is slowly revealed, not the broad truth but rather the truth surrounding the lie. The film's character-driven focus keeps attention on the tightly woven narrative that examines how external corruption slowly corrupts the soul, how covering up the truth covers up one's humanity until it becomes so darkened, so devoid of light and reality that it often cannot help but flow freely in a moment of great catharsis. This film is about one man's journey towards that catharsis and whether it will indeed come at all as one man's quest for the truth and one man's quest to cover it up collide with yet another man's very essence caught up in the middle, feeling the strain of both ends and the incessant pull from his very center pushing him towards some sort of breaking point, be that the aforementioned cathartic release or surrender to the pain, keeping it inside no matter how badly it hurts.

Felony, then, relies greatly on its actors to convey these emotions. The film's core trio never disappoint. Joel Edgerton is marvelous in the lead, portraying a broken man caught in the haze and pain of wrongdoing and forced to live with the circumstances not imposed on him by others but rather those imposed on himself, by himself. The picture is all about a portrait of his viscously torn conscience and the mounting pain upon it that won't go away so long as he keeps it bottled up inside. He brilliantly balances that inward struggle and the visible outward pain, creating a full, believable, and fully unenviable man whose life slips away with every moment he refuses to come clean. The ever reliable Tom Wilkinson is fantastic as the de facto devil on Mal's shoulders, whispering to him that keeping the pain inside is the only way to go on. Jai Courtney is likewise terrific as the man who comes to learn that there's more to Mal's story, and Carl's support for him, than he has been led to believe. His, too, is a performance shaped by pain, a pain that he actually shares with Mal in his quest to reveal there truth, a dark, hurtful truth that even as a third party wounds him deeply through the course of the film.

Felony Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Felony's 1080p transfer is gorgeous. The film-sourced presentation retains a light, even grain structure and helps define a beautifully classic filmic appearance. Details are sharp and precise, with facial features often intimately revealed while clothing and various backgrounds are commendably sharp, and naturally so. Colors are bright and satisfying, whether yellow safety vests or cheery hues on clothes and decorations at a backyard birthday party. Flesh tones are even and natural, while black levels are mostly deep and satisfying, with only a couple of moments appearing to go a little paler and noisier than is ideal. The image is clean and there are no debilitating examples of compression issues. This is, overall, a stunning effort from Millennium Entertainment.

Felony Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Felony doesn't require much of its Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. It's a simple affair, with limited music and only a few background effects. Clarity and definition are fine in all regards. Light supportive ambience, such as beeping hospital machines and light background city atmospherics, help create a realistic, albeit rather calm, environment. The biggest single effect comes from a hovering helicopter heard around the 22:50 mark; it's suitably heavy and natural in placement and volume. This is predominantly a dialogue intensive film, however, and the spoken word enjoys natural center-based presence and faultless accuracy.

Felony Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All that's included are trailers for Felony, Jamie Marks Is Dead, 4 Minute Mile, and Perfect Sisters.

Felony Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Felony is a beautifully crafted and deeply intimate portrait of a man wounded by concealing the truth surrounding his involvement in an accident. It's a simple premise but one made great by thoroughly crafted and precisely performed characters who emote real, tangible pain along the way. Joel Edgerton, Jai Courtney, and Tom Wilkinson are all terrific as the film's leads, offering three of the finer performances in cinema over the last few years. Millennium Entertainment's Blu-ray release of Felony features superb video and good lossless audio but no extras beyond a trailer. Recommended.