Shot Caller
2017 · Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
Original language: English
- crime
- drama
- thriller
The story
A newly-released prison gangster is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.
What it’s like
Gritty, desaturated California streets under hard afternoon sun and sodium-orange night light, with the prison scenes shot in cold fluorescent greens and grey concrete. The camera stays close and handheld in tight corridors and parked cars, pushing into faces, while the quieter moments sit in long, unhurried takes of a man staring at his own reflection or his tattooed hands. The score is a low, tense synth pulse that swells into abrupt, ugly gunfire, which arrives suddenly and without music. Vibe: tense, bleak, claustrophobic, with a paranoid edge. The violence is frequent and brutal, including stabbings, shootings and a graphic murder, and there is heavy drug use, racial and gang hostility, and strong language throughout. It suits a late night alone when you want something hard and unsettling rather than comforting. The story follows a recently released inmate pulled back into gang loyalty, a man whose sense of self fractures as his choices close in around him. It is for viewers who like grounded crime dramas about loyalty, identity and survival in the prison-to-street pipeline.
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