Shot Caller was directed by Ric Roman Waugh. If we take a look at his movies all of them are devoted to prison subjects. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is the main star of Shot Caller. He played Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones if you don't know.
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Jacob 'Money' Harlon is out of prison. But the prison does not leave him. He will have to control one deal to sell weapons. We see flashbacks of his former life. Previously, he was a successful man but a fatal mistake destroyed his life. Jacob gets into an accident, becomes the culprit of the death of a friend and goes to jail for 8 months. However, he has to accept living conditions in prison and with each of his actions, the prison term increases.
This idea of the film is not innovative. But the film has the other side. First of all, this film is about survival in an alien environment. We observe the transformation of a sheep into a wolf. But the prison does not really change Jacob, he simply wears a wolf's hide, but still, he's a man with a gentle soul who loves his family.
I was afraid that I saw Jaime Lannister in Shot Caller. It's often that a serial actor specializes in one role. But Nikolaj Coster-Waldau showed a completely new man. In his play, there is not even a hint of a character from the Game of Thrones.
The first hour of the film is dedicated to the formation of the personality, in the context of this film, rather even the regeneration of the protagonist, the second half sums up and shows us a pattern of self-sacrifice and the importance of the family in the life of a man.
Ric Roman Waugh was able to show a real prison filled with despair.
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I have not seen many films about prisons but here I felt a wild melancholy and hopelessness. Shot Caller is one of the hardest watches movie I've seen in 2017.
If you need a deep drama, high-quality acting, an interesting story, then Shot Caller is for you.
IMDb 7.4 // Rotten Tomatoes 80% // Metacritic 59
