He goes from an image of leisure to discipline. It feels like the male equivalent of a spa day—go to prison and get the body that you always wanted.

| Jun 9, 2024

The better-than-average vibe is heightened and perpetuated by Coster-Waldaus terrific turn as the movies complicated central character...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2022

It's a sinister watch and doesn't play out like you initially think, but the surprises and performance from Coster-Waldau helps the film stick its landing.

| Nov 10, 2020

While prison movies and films about criminals are hardly unique, the combination of the two in this way, showing the connection and how one never really leaves prison behind, in an interesting and surprisingly emotional journey.

| May 12, 2020

It's an intriguing peer into prison life and [Nikolaj] Coster-Waldau pours himself into the role, but the back and forth of the narrative in time and other twists drag down the provocative character study.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 11, 2020

A grim, well-acted drama about the corrupting power of prison gangs and the way decent people are institutionalized.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2020

An intricately tapestried character study of a way of life as well as an individual... [Ric] Waugh weaves the past and the present into a calculating and riveting thriller that not only keeps the characters on their toes, but the audience as well.

| Oct 30, 2019

Waugh offers a poignant, if not violent and disturbing account of how normal people go from normal to indoctrinated into a gang's lifestyle.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 5, 2019

Violent prison tale has blood and language.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2018

One of the most powerful, and interesting prison stories since American History X, Shot Caller is eye-opening and brutal. The story shines a huge spotlight on the 'how to make a criminal' nature of modern prisons.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2018

The rise of the incarceration industry has seen a spike in films about burly men alternately bonding with/beating each other up behind bars, and Ric Roman Waugh's Shot Caller is a pitiless yet unusually forthright genre entry.

| Feb 20, 2018

I don't mind that it's all improbable, but it's also quite dull.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 18, 2017

Stuntman-turned- film-maker Ric Roman Waugh, who writes and directs, keeps the whole thing on track in a way that would impress even more if he hadn't already had one go at the subject with the 2008 film Felon.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 18, 2017

By emphasising the characters' thuggishness over anything more nuanced, filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh seems to betray the fact that he thinks brutality is inherently entertaining.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 18, 2017

It seems to glamourise the violence within the prison system, falling back on lazy stereotypes and suggesting that shivving your way to the top can be excused if you have a noble aim.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 17, 2017

On many levels, Shot Caller makes no sense whatsoever.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 15, 2017

Waugh's film conveys the kill-or-be-killed rationalism that inexorably draws Coster-Waldau's 'Money' towards a life of violent crime.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 15, 2017

If you like your thrillers grim and violent, then Shot Caller certainly delivers the goods.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 15, 2017

The film is aiming for tough edges, but it's essentially very vanilla.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 15, 2017

My expectations here were tepid. But Shot Caller turns out to be a really taut, tense, prison-set thriller, a little like Jacques Audiard's A Prophet and longform television such as Breaking Bad or The Wire.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2017