The Top Five Manliest Movies Of 2017

Jacob Harlon (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of TV’s Game of Thrones) used to be the perfect family man – a working-class stockbroker with a loving wife and son. That all changes during an unfortunate incident that put Jacob behind bars, exposing him to the tough realities of prison life, and destroying his ties with his once-happy family. Several years later, a hardened and transformed Jacob emerges, now going through the moniker “Money”, is released, but soon discovers that once he’s in deep with the criminal lifestyle, he can never truly escape it…

By all accounts this film looked and sounded like a DTV release. Upon further inspection I realized that this was written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, the same man who brought us other gems such as 2008’s Felon and 2013’s Snitch, and is currently attached to direct the third entry in Gerard Butler’s Fallen franchise, Angel Has Fallen.

Waugh’s direction is straight-forward in its depiction of hard-hitting criminal lifestyles, he doesn’t play it cute and he never strays into mawkish sentimentality. When violence happens, it feels raw and unfaked, there are no PG-13 cutaways to hide the brutality. Waugh keeps the threat and intensity grounded and real, which all the more adds more fascination towards Harlon as he weaves his way through prison and then out into the streets of Los Angeles.

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