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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
The Last Castle
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 out of 4
| *Also starring: | Mark Ruffalo, Samuel Ball, Steve Burton, Clifton Collins Jr., Brian Goodman, Paul Calderon |
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Review by FilmiliarCineaste
3 stars out of 4
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Certainly not the first warden vs prisoner story,
this one breaks new ground (rocks?) by
turning it military. The setting is a maximum
security army prison led by a maniacal power
hungry sadist (what else is new among wardens?) who
goes around sporting humor and
irony while spouting military conformity. His
adversary is up to the engagement, being a
3-star general who landed in his care by virtue of
some bad conduct in battle that resulted
in the death of a squad under his command. The
court martial saw fit to give him 10 years
here, harder time than he imagined.
General Irwin (Robert Redford) arrives at the
prison amid a buzz of respect for his
accomplishments. Many of the prisoners either
served under him or their dads did. Colonel
Winter (James Gandolfini), the warden, is equally
excited about his new arrival, anticipating
some kind of military validation of his command
from the former general. Instead, he gets
disrespect which quickly festers into a huge dose
of resentment. Inmate Irwin is not going
to have an easy ride.
A group of prisoners, all military, mind you,
immediately coalesce around Irwin, voicing
grievances Irwin wants no part of. But not all the
men are part of that group, especially the
cynical prison bookie (Mark Ruffalo) who sets up a
lottery on when the good general will
commit suicide. The betting grows fierce when
Colonel Winter decides to punish Irwin by
making him carry rocks for hours. But by exhausting
all his energies in carrying out the
nearly impossible task, surrounded by the entire
prison population, he merits their universal
respect instead, and we have a leader who, by this
time, has some grievances of his own.
The most grievous is the inhumanity of the warden
who he thinks has committed one
military crime too many in his manipulation of his
charges. It becomes a war in which
military tactics are employed by a man who wrote
the book to best the man who holds the
castle with the overpowering weapons and the
stronger force. How it's worked out is the
fun of the movie. After all, in the words of the
tagline, "no castle can have two kings".
But, it does stretch a point or two too many and
therein lies the weakness. Not the least of
these is creating a rationale for a man of Irwin's
caliber and accomplishments to receive so
harsh a sentence as to be put into such severe
surroundings. That's what had to be done,
credible or questionable, to get this matchup
going. Just as the warden manipulates his
prisoners so the writer is manipulating his
audience, like trying to convince us that 1200
convicted men would so unanimously fall into a
command structure under the general. It's
almost sheepish and far from reality but, you know
what? So what. Yes, there are some
things that have to be put aside and, once that's
done, there's much to enjoy, especially the
two lead character actors and strong supporting ones.
It may not have the complexity and depth of "The
Shawshank Redemption" but it is an
original prison yarn with interesting shades and
colors. Gandolfini provides his warden with
that Gandolfini patent on adding humor and
dimension to his bad guy, no matter how
criminally twisted he might be at heart. This
natural dimension of the actor makes what
might have been a standard role into one worthy of
study, one in which his warden uses
these talents strategically, disarming his victims
through deception and false expectation.
Redford, an actor who can't be accused of
overexposing himself in order to keep working,
is properly smart, disciplined and contained as he
sets out to outfox the keeper of the house
by using his own weapons against him. As a natural
leader he relishes command, which he
puts to good purpose, both morally and dramatically.
Writer David Scarpa cleverly maintains enough
plausibility and logic to pull off a delicious
dramatic one-upsmanship in military resourcefulness
even including some mechanical
concepts that have survived from the middle ages.
Of course his script doesn't stray for
long from complete fantasy but its trappings make
it a good entertainment that provides
ample opportunity to point out the special meaning
of the flag for military men. These days,
with the stars and stripes so meaningful to
Americans, there's an extra resonance to this
theme, whether the filmmakers intended it, or not.
Israeli born director Rod Lurie did a suitable job
of putting it all together, though he appears
to have lost his suredness with some of the minor
characters. Mark Ruffalo and Delroy
Lindo seemed, at times, unfocused as though they
were left to their own devices to flesh
out their characters and reactions. Lurie was more
exacting in last year's "The Contender".
This is a director with a good eye for tasteful
character development and he's worth
watching.
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