Felony

Synopsis: Detective Mal Toohey (Joel Edgerton) is elevated to hero status when he takes a bullet in a successful drug bust. But after partying too hard to celebrate he drives home drunk and accidentally clips a cyclist, the child rider hitting his head and ending up in a coma. Mal immediately calls it in but covers up the truth saying that he found the kid in the road. His senior Det.Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) has just been teamed with newcomer Jim Melic (Jai Courtney) and when Jim starts suspecting Mal’s story, the three get caught up in a tense conflict of morals, cover-ups and self-protection.

A taut and intelligent psychological drama, Felony is marked by the quality of its script and its compelling lead performances. Full credit must go to Edgerton who not only stars but has also written the screenplay, with seemingly complete fidelity to police procedures, but also with insight into the human heart and the nature of guilt, grief and forgiveness. Everything about this film feels authentic – the dialogue, the relationships, and the all-too-human characters to whom I’m sure each viewer will be able to relate. Most of us know what it is like to fudge the truth but Felony amps up the situation to ask the really hard questions  – questions of how much guilt one can live with and how willing are we to speak the truth if it means hurting someone else. The film also deals with issues of loyalty, compassion, judgmentalism and, ultimately, forgiveness, both of oneself and others.

The police drama is something with which we are perhaps over-familiar from television but here it is realized in a far more gripping and precisely-observed fashion whilst its crucial themes are handled in a very down-to-earth manner. Because the action takes place in about three days and involves mostly the police station, the hospital and Mal’s home, and has few outside settings, it all feels contained and compelling. With fairly understated sets we are all the more engaged in the dialogue, themes and the dilemmas of the characters.

Edgerton has matured so much since his early television years. He brings real truthfulness to Mal, a man who seems the typical Aussie cop, a bit taciturn and macho but all the while a really decent and caring human being. British actor Wilkinson gives a blistering performance (and does a damn good Aussie accent) as Carl, a hard drinking cop who truly believes in morality as a black and white thing – there are the bad guys who mean to do harm, like Victor (a paedophile featuring in a small sub-plot), and the good guys, like Mal, who make normal human mistakes. He is also passionate about the idea that cops are like a family and must stick together.  

Although a very male-dominated story, two female roles are also notable. Melissa George is Mal’s wife, while the very photogenic half Sri-Lankan Sarah Roberts plays the Indian mother of the injured child. Both women add a softness to the plot while further fleshing out the issues of forgiveness and self-interest.

What music is used is minimal and truly powerful and significant plot points are gratifyingly unpredictable, with very little going into the usual and tired-out places that police dramas so often go whilst the open ending leaves us reflecting on our own powers of forgiveness. Felony augers great things for Edgerton, who also wrote the original story for The Rover, as a script-writer, whilst his acting skills, already making significant inroads into Hollywood, are not in doubt,

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