Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Omari Hardwick, Lake Bell

For years now I have been on a quest to watch every movie that has been made, at least every movie made that also happens to be a real movie. Some of these movies had smart premises, while others were much too silly for my taste. One example of this was with the 1978 thriller The Boys From Brazil. (WARNING: The rest of this paragraph and the beginning of the second paragraph have some really major spoilers for this movie.) During the course of the movie, it is revealed that the notorious and real-life Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele is still alive and in hiding. Since fleeing Germany at the end of the Second World War, Mengele has been working with other ex-Nazis on a plan to resurrect the Third Reich. Specifically, Mengele took genetic material from Adolf Hitler before he died, and used this genetic material in the 1960s to make dozens of clones of Hitler that were birthed by surrogate mothers and then sent to various adoptive parents around the world. The hope, of course, was that at least one of these babies would grow up and become a tyrant like the original Hitler. Yes, I found this premise to be extremely absurd, especially for the time that the movie was made. To its credit, the movie seemed to realize that just making clones would not be enough to make another Hitler. It's explained that each of the baby clones was sent to be adopted by couples where the husband was a civil servant that was significantly older than his wife and lacking plain human warmth, just as it was for the original Hitler's father. Further, the ex-Nazis' plan is to murder all of these fathers when the clones reach the same childhood age Hitler was at when his own father died.

Obviously, this process of selecting the appropriate adoptive parents and manipulating what the clones would experience in their childhood was an attempt to increase the chance at least one clone would have a mind like Hitler's when he was grown up. In other words, the movie was arguing that environment and experiences over a long period of time is key to shape a person one way or another. That was something in the movie I could believe in part because I've seen it depicted in a number of movies all of the years. One of the Star Trek movies dealt with a character finding out that he had been cloned years earlier, and his clone had grown up in an environment much different than his, resulting in the clone having a much different personality. And several years ago on this website I reviewed the movie Ticket To Heaven, a movie that depicted a pretty smart guy suddenly finding himself in a much different environment, and within a few days he had been completely brainwashed. True, a person's genetics can sometimes alter a person's path on this thing called life, such as having to deal with major health issues. But I am sure all of you, like myself, that are reading this review can relate to this idea of being influenced by the surrounding environment. Who hasn't been in some sort of environment - new or familiar, pleasant or awful - and had their mind affected to a small or a large degree for possibly the rest of their life? I consider myself lucky to be born in this age and in my country, so I can't help but wonder what my personality might have been like had I been born in an earlier time or in another country... or born both in an earlier time and in another country.

One environment that always seems to have a big impact to the people in it is prison. I don't think I have to tell you why, since I'm sure you've heard of what happens in prisons all over the world, from murders to gang activity. These true stories have made me wonder many times how I would fare in such a place. Not very well, I think. Even if I were to survive, I am sure my mind would be extremely warped by the time I was released. Though the thought is scary, it's all the same fascinating to me - how exactly would it happen? That's what Shot Caller promised to show, which made me want to check it out. The person in Shot Caller that has his ordinary life completely turned upside down by a stint in prison is a man called Jacob Harlon (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game Of Thrones). Over the course of the movie, we learn that Jacob was once a respected stockbroker with a loving wife named Kate (Lake Bell, BoJack Horseman) and a young son. But one night his life is permanently shaken up when he gets into a car accident that kills one of his friends. It's revealed that Jacob had been drinking before the accident and his blood alcohol content was well over the legal limit. Jacob is tried, and sentenced to be imprisoned for what seems will be a short stretch. However, Jacob soon discovers how brutal and unforgiving prison life can be, and for his own survival he joins a gang in prison, doing various infractions and crimes within the prison so that the gang will keep him protected by prisoners who want to do him in. These infractions and crimes eventually get his prison sentence extended for a longer period and he is transferred to an even more dangerous prison, where he is controlled by a lifer prisoner called "The Beast" (Holt McCallany, CSI: Miami), who runs a gang that has members both in prison and outside. When Jacob is eventually paroled, The Beast expects Jacob to continue to obey his command and do illegal activities for the gang. Jacob doesn't want to do this, but he knows his family will be in danger if he disobeys. What follows is his struggle while under the eye of Ed Kutcher (Omari Hardwick, Power), a probation officer who is working with other law officials to investigate the gang that Jacob still has ties with.

Although this plot description for Shot Caller may at first glance seem straightforward enough, viewers may be surprised within the first few minutes of the running time, because writer/director Rick Roman Waugh (Felon) makes the movie unfold for the majority of the running time in an unconventional manner. When the movie starts, main character Jacob is released after his long stint in prison, and his subsequent post-penal actions are intercut with scenes of his life before being initially convicted, followed by intercutting Jacob's present-day actions with scenes of his years in prison. This may sound like following the story would be very confusing at times, but actually it isn't particularly difficult at all. Sure, at the beginning of the movie we don't know anything about Jacob other than he's a convict being released from prison, but this opening is written and directed in a manner that had me at least having a fairly good idea of what was mainly happening at that moment, and feeling very interested in learning what was everything about this freed convict Jacob. As the story continued both in the present day and in flashbacks, I may have not known every essential detail at every point, but I still had a good understanding of what was happening. The movie peels the mystery layer by layer like an onion, and I was always interested to see what the next peeling would reveal. This unconventional storytelling technique in my opinion makes the story a lot more compelling than if it had been told in chronological order from start to finish, because it made me think and theorize. Also, a big mystery of the movie - what Jacob is secretly planning to ultimately do now that he's out of prison - avoids some subtle clues along the way that might have been made blatant with a more conventional storytelling style.

As a bonus, Waugh's screenplay contains a lot of nice little scenes, scenes that serve some kind of purpose as well as being compelling to watch. Jacob has a couple of scenes with his lawyer that really hit home the fact that Jacob can't really do much to get out now he's entangled in the legal system. There are also moments pre-prison and post-prison with Jacob interacting with his wife and child that for the most part don't go well for any involved, and the pain of the words of any particular speaker hurts, but feels convincing enough that you keep watching with hope that possibly they can connect mutually. The screenplay isn't perfect - some flaws include a subplot about Jacob's family being sued that is dropped as soon as it's brought up, and the fact that first time wealthy and family man offender Jacob is sent to a hardcore maximum-security prison - but all the same there is an authenticity about Shot Caller that makes such flaws seem insignificant. A lot of this feeling of authenticity comes from showing how someone completely innocent and law-abiding can with time and effort be driven to have a nature that is dark and cruel. As we put the pieces of the movie together in our mind, we see that the character of Jacob was taken down the criminal path by circumstances and through the interventions of others slowly over time, becoming more lost into evil with every new task "The Beast" and his minions get Jacob to do. A role like this that has to show every stage from innocence to criminally incorrigible would be tough for any actor to pull off, but actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau manages to do it. One big reason for his success in the role of Jacob is that while his character is driven to do some horrible things, for much of the movie we see that he sometimes can't help but show a vulnerable side, such as fear or sadness. You can sense his discomfort when he's released from prison and tries his best to put up a macho front to the other members of the gang he's in. Later, when he cruelly rejects the attempt by his son to reconcile and slams the door, we see him cry, and he clearly wishes he could reconnect. But from what we've seen of him before and after that moment makes clear that his action at that moment was for the best for all, no matter how much it hurts.

Coster-Waldau isn't the only good action on display in Shot Caller. Omari Hardwick as the strict parole officer also seems to know that showing some humanity would make his character more convincing. He's tough on the ex-cons that he supervises ("Own the s**t, rise above it," he brusquely tells one ex-con), but in private he shows some frustration and occasional near-helplessness, and even near trauma when he reflects on an almost deadly raid on a parole violator. Actor Holt McCallany gives an intriguing performance as prison gang leader "The Beast", enough that it's actually a surprise that despite having control over Jacob and his other underlings, he only shows up for just two or three scenes. Had his character shown more of his iron fist over Jacob and the other gang members, this iron fist may have given the prison scenes a harder punch. But that's not to say that the prison scenes have a lack of authenticity to them. Though I have never been to a prison in real life (and I'm making sure I never will), most of what we get to see of prison life in this movie feels right. We feel the cramped and crowded conditions, and there is an air of not only desperation to live, but also to do anything to survive and be in power despite the cost, despite the fact that a trained eye will see that the cost of this movie wasn't particularly high. Actually, the uneasy atmosphere, along with some well-chosen seedy locations and professional lighting and photography show that writer/director Waugh is a very thorough, thoughtful, and careful director despite any limitations like a limited budget put upon him. Hopefully the great end results of Shot Caller will convince one of the major Hollywood movie studios to break him out of the prison of low budget independent filmmaking and give him the opportunity to helm a project of even greater potential.

(Posted November 14, 2025)