Review: Stone

Edward Norton (with cornrows, no less) plays the title incarcerated arsonist looking to convince someone that he should be paroled. Unfortunately, his parole officer is weary Robert De Niro, a man who has seen it all and has absolutely no faith in anything, and just wants to get this case out of the way so he can begin his retirement. Stone wants to be believed, however, he wants to be heard. He’s even found some kind of spiritual enlightenment. De Niro ain’t buying it, though. He doesn’t know what he’s up to, but whatever it is, he doesn’t believe it and he just wants Stone to stop wasting his time. Meanwhile, De Niro’s marriage to deeply religious Frances Conroy is a completely loveless one. She has turned to drink, and barely seems coherent most of the time. De Niro, for his part, reads the bible with her like he’s just going through the motions. He doesn’t believe in that, either. Milla Jovovich plays Stone’s sweet-faced wife (but highly sexual) Lucetta, who seems like she would do absolutely anything to get her husband out of prison, and she seems to have come to De Niro at a very weak moment. Just what the hell is going on here?

This movie, directed by John Curran (“The Painted Veil”) and scripted by Angus MacLachlan (the indie hit from a few years back, “Junebug”) is the damndest thing. The first two-thirds are an enjoyable, well-acted, twisty crime flick where you’re eagerly anticipating the twist. Well, the twist appears to be that the last fifteen minutes belong to a completely different, more thematically serious film about faith, religion, loveless marriages, human nature, and so on. So is it a twisty crime flick with a dud ending that leaves several threads untied? Or is it a human drama about flawed personalities that takes three quarters of its length to get to the point? (And in some cases, like that opening scene, things just aren’t properly integrated into the story. I kinda know what it meant, but it wasn’t enough)

The acting doesn’t help matters in deciding what kind of film this is. All the performances are fine, Jovovich giving her best-ever performance, and Norton (looking at times like Sean Penn in “Dead Man Walking” and sounding like Eric Roberts) as always superb. But they’re clearly acting in the twisty crime flick portion of the film, whilst De Niro (paired with Norton for the first time since “The Score”) and the pathetically sloshed Conroy appear to be in the other (and in my view, less interesting) film. When you cast Edward Norton (one of the best actors of his generation, along with Matt Damon and Philip Seymour Hoffman) in a film about a guy trying to decide whether another guy is for real or not, you’re clearly going to expect a twisty crime flick, right? So just what in the hell is this film? To be honest, I think Curran and MacLachlan (and the cast) are as unsure as I am about that question. So what to do? Well, since I enjoyed the first three quarters of the film, I guess I have to admit to coming away with a more favourable view of the film than not. But be warned that you’re gonna end up feeling disappointed if you’re expecting the film to follow through with everything it seems to originally set up. I refuse to believe that Norton and Jovovich, with the way they play their roles, were in anything other than a twisty crime-thriller. It just doesn’t work in any other way. The nature of Jovovich’s character, for instance, seems to change in every scene, from sweet innocent, to loving spouse, to flirty, to downright slutty. All the while being entirely believable and fluid from moment to moment, I might add. But the character is clearly out of a film with lots of twists and turns, not just a character drama.

I would love to get the thoughts of all involved here on just what kind of film they thought they were all making and what the point was. I bet there’d be lots of different answers. I kinda liked much of this, but ended up feeling poorly about it when it finally ended, but I’ll see it as a glass half-full rather than half-empty. So bear that in mind when you see the rather average rating.

Rating: C+