3 out of 5

Director: John Curran

Strange. Stone doesnt appear to be directly about anything. This is not a bad thing, it just lends itself to a movie thats much more contemplative than anything else, leading to a whole of excellent performances and interestingly wound and repeated plot devices, but not quite a truly satisfying film experience. DeNiro plays a parole officer near to retiring, who decides to close out his last few cases. One of these cases is arsonist Stone – Edward Norton – whose lack of acceptance of his past, and then odd mental hiccups while imprisoned, troublingly mirror some of the darkness in DeNiros past. Like There Will Be Blood – a brilliant character study thats hard to truly like because there are no likable characters – Stone presents no wholesome protagonist, no one without a weight dragging them down. The film plays at thriller material, having Stone encourage his wife (Jovovich) to invade DeNiros life and possibly seduce him into giving Stone an early release, but the overall purpose is to serve the films study of these characters – the man living with, and not facing his burden (DeNiro), the man who accepts his crimes but does not, perhaps, face their meaning (Norton), and the woman who continually lives in the moment (Jovovich). Its very smart, very heavy, and very unfilmic. Interesting, though without the mental chops to allow you to reflect too much on whats happening – rather just to witness it.