By Ben McEachenMonday 29 Dec 2014MoviesReading Time: 3 minutes
You are drunk. You are driving. You hit a boy, knocking him off his bike. No-one saw you do it. What are you going to do? You didn’t mean it, and such an awful mistake will not only shatter the boy’s life. A full confession will have disastrous consequences for you and your family.
Australian drama Felony uses this disturbing situation to raise a simple tension we all face every day. Should we judge actions by the intentions behind them or by their consequences? How do we work out what is right or wrong?
Recently seen in cinemas as Ramses in Exodus: Gods and Kings, Australian star Joel Edgerton plays a different type of authority figure in Felony. As Detective Malcolm Toohey, Edgerton is the drunk-driver who accidentally side-swipes a boy. Panicked, Toohey is protected by a colleague, Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson), due to their shared bond of being the ‘good guys’. However, detective Jim Melic (Jai Courtney) is suspicious of Toohey’s account of ‘finding’ the injured boy. While Summer’s cover-up brings in the issue of corruption, Felony is largely fuelled by the choices Toohey must make.
Edgerton also wrote the screenplay, a tight and engaging yarn that sadly unravels during its final stages. Struggling to sort out a suitable ending, Felony opts for some convenient developments. These come crashing down upon the thinking of Toohey and Melic, in an abrupt way that doesn’t believably link with the slow-burn consideration before it. Still, lovers of sturdy, provocative drama should appreciate how they have been confronted by a moral minefield.
“We can live with this” is a jarring line from Felony. It comes from Toohey’s wife Julie (Melissa George), after she thinks about what they should do. Julie’s assessment is similar to that of Summer. Because Toohey didn’t deliberately hit the boy, why should the detective ruin his own family’s life? He’s not a terrible person. He just made a mistake. Better to live with the guilt, rather than confess and possibly have to live with prison.
I think plenty of people would react as Julie did. But what if one of our own children was hit by a drunk-driver? Would we allow the driver to keep quiet, and ‘live with it’? Or would we want justice to be done? Such tough questions reveal the mess that occurs when we pick and choose morality, based on our personal view of intentions and consequences.
“Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.” Those words of guidance come from Colossians 3:9-10, and are directed at Christians. Where Felony shows people lying to protect themselves, the Colossians’ statement calls for honesty. Always. The reason is simple. The contrast between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ self, is an illustration of how different life is, as a Christian.
The ‘practices’ of the ‘old’ self describes someone who thinks mainly of what is best for them. Their way of living is to define morality as it suits them. But the ‘new’ self frees Christians from that. Instead, it enables them to live as God calls them to live. To live as people who understand morality and decision-making in light of a powerful principle: “whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”(Col 3:17)
Whether it is responding to a terrible accident that you are responsible for, or any other situation in life, the ‘new’ self knows that living for Jesus is the best course of action. Always.
Rating: M
Distributor: Roadshow
Release Date: December 31 (DVD / Blu-ray)