Parents' Guide to Shot Caller

SHOT CALLER is the story of Jacob (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor from Game of Thrones), a Pasadena stockbroker whose cushy life comes to an end when he drinks one too many at a dinner and then causes a fatal car accident. This bright, privileged white man with no prior arrests is convicted of manslaughter and sent to a prison where fellow inmates are all violent criminals. Told he won't survive in that merciless environment unless he establishes that he's no pushover, he fights the first guy who challenges him, earning time in solitary and the respect of the white gang running the prison. The rules are laid out for him: He'll be taken into the protective fold, but only if he performs illegal acts for the gang. They make clear that he'll be dead if he doesn't comply. The prison guards are corrupt, paid on a monthly basis by an imprisoned leader called The Beast (Holt McCallany), who runs his lucrative drugs and arms operations from inside with the assistance of inmates and members on the outside. When Jacob, nicknamed Money by the gang, gets out on parole, he's tasked by The Beast with transacting an illegal arms deal. To protect his family, Jacob tells his wife and son to forget him and get on with their lives, knowing that the gang will never let him leave the criminal life and that if anything goes wrong, The Beast will have his family killed. Jacob finds a way to rid the world of a few bad seeds and thwart the arms deal. Although he remains a criminal, he also manages to do the right thing.