As cable-televised sagas like True Detective and The Wire continue to garner more and more acclaim, big-screen crime thrillers seem to have gone out of fashion.
Because of this, it’s kind of refreshing to see movies like Felony make their way to the cinema. Unfortunately, director Matthew Saville doesn’t do a lot with the advantages that film can offer crime-focused storytelling and the whole affair ends up being a bit underwhelming.
Felony follows ace detective Mal (Joel Edgerton), who spends a night out on the town after closing a big case and in a drunken stupor ends up running down a child. From there, the crux of the film settles on whether Mal and his mentor, Carl (Tom Wilkinson), can cover up the crime and live with the guilt before young detective Jim (Jai Courtney) puts the pieces together and exposes the pair.
Edgerton isn’t especially convincing as star cop Mal – but this is an issue less to do with his acting and more with the script. There’s a frustrating disparity between Edgerton’s depiction of a relatable everyday bloke and the ace detective the script seems to think he is. Courtney is slightly more convincing as newbie Jim but he stumbles when it comes to the film’s clunky romance subplot. Wilkinson ends up being the scene-stealer as the cranky, jaded and ultimately corrupt Carl.
The pacing and cinematography of the film is reasonable, but in more than a few ways, Felony just feels like a movie-length procedural than a big-screen production. All up, Felony is a kind-of-average crime thriller that touches on some interesting ideas but ultimately fails to pull them together into anything truly memorable.
2/5 stars
Felony is in cinemas from Thursday August 28.
