Shot Caller Overview

There is not a lot subtlety to this jail thriller, but it surely’s edgy sufficient to carry the curiosity because it follows a nice, upstanding man behind bars and transforms him right into a prison mastermind. If the premise sounds acquainted, maybe you’ve got seen Jacques Audiard’s soulful 2009 masterpiece A Prophet. Properly, that is extra like a blow to the top. And by emphasising the characters’ thuggishness over something extra nuanced, filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh (Snitch) appears to betray the truth that he thinks brutality is inherently entertaining.

The story centres on Jacob (Sport of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a profitable banker with a cheerful dwelling life along with his spouse and son (Lake Bell and Jonathan McClendon). Then he is concerned in a drunk-driving incident and convicted of manslaughter. And in jail he is adopted by the white supremacist gang, pushed to commit such nasty violence that he cuts off all contact along with his household when he is lastly launched a decade or so later. However he additionally clearly has a plan now, hiding from his tough-guy parole officer Kutcher (Omari Hardwick) to arrange a dodgy operation with former prison-mate Frank (Jon Bernthal) and younger navy veteran Howie (Emory Cohen). Orchestrating all of that is the large boss (Holt McCallany), who’s imprisoned for all times.

Fortunately, the actors all add texture to their characters, bringing them to life even when the film itself appears tired of something beneath the floor. Coster-Waldau is terrific at capturing Jacob’s internal decency and steely survival intuition as he transforms from a slick monetary analyst right into a muscled killing machine. However in fact it is his inside journey that’s much more fascinating. Hardwick and Bernthal are strong as powerful guys who really feel a bit simplistic. However Bell has some correctly steely moments as a lady who merely will not surrender on her man even when he tells her to, and Cohen finds some intriguing layers within the quirky, shell-shocked Howie.

Alongside the best way, there are fairly a number of evident plot holes, primarily within the rush to exaggerated military-style police motion. And Waugh’s choice to make use of a parallel story construction utterly diffuses any suspense. By intercutting between Jacob’s early days in jail and the mission he launches when he will get out, we by no means doubt what’s going to occur. Nonetheless, there’s some subtext to undercut the excessively macho environment. And whereas the central message is critically shaky (that you must be a killer to outlive on this nasty world!), there is a driving vitality to the movie that by no means lets go.

 

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