Felony (2014)

Directed by Matthew Saville.

This is a cop movie, but not actually a crime movie except to the extent that solving crimes and convicting criminals is the work that cops do.  It’s concerned with police culture and the moral ramifications of a traffic accident in which a detective is culpably involved.  Saville is the director of another fine crime movie, Noise (2007), but the chief creator of Felony is Joel Edgerton, who wrote, produced, and plays the lead.

He plays Detective Mal Toohey, who leads a successful raid on a drug importer in the first scene.  Filmed in unsteadicam, the raid swirls through a warehouse until Mal is shot by one of the gang.  His bullet-proof vest saves him, but he is left with a very painful bruise.  After an evening’s boozy celebration, he heads for home well over.05.  He is stopped by a booze bus but since he is on the force the traffic cops let him go.  Later, on a dark street he fails to notice a boy on a bicycle and clips him with a wing mirror.

He calls an ambulance for the unconscious boy, but in a panic he pretends that he just happened on the scene and found the boy on the road.  Two other detectives, Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) and Jim Melic (Jai Courtney) arrive and Carl takes Mal aside, sending Jim to keep the rubbernecks away.

The ensuing scene is superbly handled.  Carl advising Mal to keep quiet, Jim glancing suspiciously at them as he shepherds the bystanders, the ambos at work and traffic police trying to oversee the scene and ask questions.  The cinematic space is beautifully composed, the parallel actions are clear despite their complexity, and the central question of the film is well established.  Will Mal take responsibility for the accident, or can he avoid it?

Police work goes on as background accompaniment as Mal becomes more tormented and Jim more suspicious.  Mal’s wife Julie (Melissa George) goes from normal suburban mum – the cop-wife stereotype – to urging him to keep quiet.  Meanwhile, the young boy dies and the sympathetic Jim is attracted to his mother Ankhila (Sarah Roberts).

From here it plays out like an ABC Sunday night drama, competent acting, literate script but a slowly attenuating audience involvement.  Edgerton is now well-established as an international movie actor, but it seems his ambitions stretch a little further.  He’s yet to make his case.