Shot Caller

It seems to glamourise the violence within the prison system, falling back on lazy stereotypes and suggesting that shivving your way to the top can be excused if you have a noble aim.

On many levels, Shot Caller makes no sense whatsoever.

The film is aiming for tough edges, but it's essentially very vanilla.

My expectations here were tepid. But Shot Caller turns out to be a really taut, tense, prison-set thriller, a little like Jacques Audiard's A Prophet and longform television such as Breaking Bad or The Wire.

If you imagine Andy Dufresne embarking on a hyper-violent gangland crime spree, you've got the premise of this thriller about the corrosive power of prison.

As the plot develops it does lose momentum a bit and at times verges on cliche.

He goes from an image of leisure to discipline. It feels like the male equivalent of a spa day—go to prison and get the body that you always wanted.

The better-than-average vibe is heightened and perpetuated by Coster-Waldaus terrific turn as the movies complicated central character...

It's a sinister watch and doesn't play out like you initially think, but the surprises and performance from Coster-Waldau helps the film stick its landing.

While prison movies and films about criminals are hardly unique, the combination of the two in this way, showing the connection and how one never really leaves prison behind, in an interesting and surprisingly emotional journey.