Felon

Wade Porter is a family man with a promising future until he confronts a burglar in his home and kills him with a baseball bat. Because the intruder died outside the house, Porter is convicted of manslaughter rather than acting in defense, and receives a three-year sentence in a maximum-security prison. Inside, the ordinary rules of society no longer apply, and his time behind bars quickly becomes far more dangerous than his sentence suggests. He is forced to share a cell with a notorious repeat murderer and draws the attention of a sadistic guard, leaving survival as his only goal.

Ric Roman Waugh wrote and directed the film, which was released in 2008 and stands as the first entry in the list of features he has directed. Stephen Dorff plays Porter, with Val Kilmer as fellow inmate John Smith, Harold Perrineau as Lt. Jackson, Marisol Nichols as Laura Porter, Johnny Lewis as Snowman and Nick Chinlund as Sgt. Roberts. It was produced by Tucker Tooley and Dan Keston for Stage 6 Films, Tooley Productions and Pantry Films on a budget of 3 million dollars.

Made for a modest sum, the film reached a wide audience: on IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 88,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.1 from roughly a thousand votes. A critics' score of 6.1 from 25 reviews places it below the audience ratings.