Felon

Nothing like a gritty, gaunt B flick to cut those studio behemoths down to size. Felon is an especially raw prison movie, largely shot in the dehumanizing New Mexico State Penitentiary. In addition to its central story of home defender Wade (Dorff) getting a murder rap and slowly losing his identity in the superviolent clink, the film does a better-than-average job of depicting the pressures on guards, trainees and families on the outside. No actor truly breaks out of the uniform adequacy, except for Val Kilmer, inventive as ever as a bearded, Zen-like lifer.