Director: John Curran
Writer: Angus MacLachlan
Starring: Robert De Niro,
Edward Norton, Milla Jovovich, Frances Conroy
Edward Norton has this
incredible ability to make just about any choice believable. He’ll take a
convict character, like the one in the movie “Stone”, and he can turn him into
a hood. You don’t question Norton talking in Ebonics. Then he turns around and
transforms the same character into someone who has found enlightenment. His
transformation is seamless. The Ebonics disappear and there is no doubt that
this character could to this.
That’s not to say the rest
of “Stone” is quite so plausible. Unfortunately, it’s one of those movies where
all of its seams show, a film where every action pushes a determined plot that
does not flow naturally from the characters involved. The performances by De
Niro, Jovovich and Conroy are all great, but you can feel the people behind the
camera in what these characters go through.
Norton’s character makes a
great example here. He’s been in prison for eight years. Why contain his
transformation within his parole process? Why not show him failing his parole
first and then go through a transformation before his next shot? Why contain
these events to such a small period of time? The issues dealt with here are
ones that these characters would struggle with throughout their entire lives.
Frances Conroy’s trapped
wife is given more meat than her story is given development. She’s been with De
Niro for so long, we need more than just the early scene in their marriage and
her final solution to the problem of her husband to figure her out. Her
devotion to God tells us something about her, but what exactly? We don’t see
how she incorporates her relationship with God into the life she chooses to
stay in through great sacrifice.
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