Shot Caller

Cin­e­ma has a long-stand­ing fas­ci­na­tion with prison. From The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion to Brawl in Cell Block 99, film­mak­ers and audi­ences alike have a mor­bid curios­i­ty about what goes on behind the bars. In this sat­u­rat­ed genre, it’s sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to find a film about incar­cer­a­tion which suc­cess­ful­ly treads the fine line between real­ism and sen­sa­tion­al­ism. Ric Roman Waugh has been try­ing valiant­ly for a while – this being the final film in his ​‘Prison Tril­o­gy’ fol­low­ing 2013’s Snitch and 2008’s Felon.

With Niko­laj Coster-Wal­dau in the lead role, Shot Caller con­cerns the impris­on­ment of stock­bro­ker Jacob Har­lon, who is sent down fol­low­ing an acci­dent that he caused. Strug­gling to cope with his guilt as well as the idea of life on the inside, he takes some hor­ren­dous­ly poor advice, which quick­ly sees him tan­gled up in a white pow­er gang close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Aryan Broth­er­hood. The action takes place both in the present and past, as we see the bru­tal real­i­ty of Jacob’s time on the inside as well as his attempts to build a life on the outside.

It’s an inter­est­ing con­cept, and the idea that actions in prison impact upon your life out­side is def­i­nite­ly worth explor­ing, but Waugh’s script falls flat as he fails to find any human­i­ty with­in his char­ac­ters. The film takes a heavy dose of inspi­ra­tion from Amer­i­can His­to­ry X, but unfor­tu­nate­ly seems to miss the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and redemp­tive qual­i­ty which pro­pelled Tony Kaye’s film to great­ness. The only char­ac­ters with any nar­ra­tive depth are Jacob and his parole offi­cer Kutch­er (Omari Hard­wick), which makes it hard to invest in the story.

Wal­dau is clear­ly doing his best to move away from his Game of Thrones role, but Jacob becomes an increas­ing­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic and irri­tat­ing char­ac­ter, his mis­for­tune large­ly down to his own poor deci­sion-mak­ing. Jon Bern­thal, fresh from his bril­liant star­ring role in Netflix’s The Pun­ish­er, is wast­ed in the role of a Neo-Nazi called ​“Shot­gun”, and the rest of the ​‘bad guys’ merge into one homo­ge­neous mass.

In fact, it seems to glam­ourise the vio­lence with­in the prison sys­tem, falling back on lazy stereo­types and sug­gest­ing that shiv­ving your way to the top can be excused if you have a noble aim. In the end, the film leaves you with a sense that the sys­tem has irrepara­bly ruined Jacob’s life and the lives of the peo­ple he loves. But rather than feel­ing a sense of anger at the gov­ern­ment which fails soci­ety, you just feel Jacob prob­a­bly had it com­ing all along. If you’re look­ing for a more nuanced por­trait of life in America’s jus­tice sys­tem, seek out The Work instead.