Felony (2013)

Genre: Thriller

Directed by: Matthew Saville

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Wilkinson, Jai Courtney

Running time: 105 minutes

Mal Toohey is a well-respected police detective who gets shot in the line of duty during a raid, but is saved by his protective vest. That evening, he goes out to celebrate with his fellow officers. As he drives back home, after drinking too much, he hits a teenage boy who was traveling on his bike. Mal calls an ambulance, but fails to tell anyone of his involvement in the accident. An honest young cop, who falls for the boy’s mother, suspects Toohey of being the person responsible, so he starts investigating the matter, though his superiors are trying to convince him to let it go.

While the subject matter of this Australian thriller is nothing really new in itself, the script and the directorial job done by Matthew Saville manage to breathe some freshness into the concept of the good cop trying to do his job in spite of the bad ones trying to protect each other.

There are some solid acting performances here, especially on Tom Wilkinson’s part. The veteran actor does a solid job as the senior detective trying to protect his younger officer, in spite of the fact that he knows he did something terribly wrong. A few of Wilkinson’s dialogues with his fellow cast members were really intense and well done.

Overall, this is a really good movie. I especially appreciated the fact that the filmmakers did not try to paint a rosy picture by the time the movie ended. It is a more realistic way of seeing things to say that, sometimes, people do choose to ignore the reality in certain situations.

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