Felon (film)

Felon is a 2008 American prison film written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh. The film stars Stephen Dorff, Val Kilmer and Harold Perrineau. The film tells the story of the family man who ends up in state prison after he kills an intruder. The story is based on events that took place in the 1990s at the notorious California State Prison, Corcoran. The film was released in the United States on July 18, 2008.

Plot

Family man Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) is living the American Dream with his girlfriend Laura (Marisol Nichols) and their son Michael: they have a nice house, Wade has just raised a loan to make his company grow and they are going to get married. However, their dream becomes a nightmare when Wade unintentionally kills a burglar on his lawn that had broken into their house in the middle of the night. By attacking the fleeing unarmed intruder outside of the house, he is arrested for murder, and during the first night in the county jail, Wade gets into a brawl after being attacked by an inmate in the community cell. With $1,000,000 bail he can't raise, after 90 days, the public defender is able to negotiate a deal for Wade to serve three years for involuntary manslaughter, or he could spend more time awaiting trial. Sentenced to Corcoran State Prison, during the bus ride over, Danny Sampson (Chris Browning), leader of the local Aryan Brotherhood, stabs a man and hides the knife with a young Aryan member named Snowman (Johnny Lewis) sitting behind Wade. In a moment's panic, Snowman hides the knife under Wade's seat and forces him to deny knowledge of it. As a result, Wade is sent to solitary confinement until the mess can be sorted out. Upon further investigation by Lieutenant Jackson (Harold Perrineau), Jackson is convinced Wade is an accessory to murder because he denies knowledge of the knife, and decides to send Wade to the Security Housing Unit (SHU), of which Jackson is the commanding officer.