Stone (***)

Crime has paid for Edward Norton. His breakout role (and first Oscar nomination) came in 1996’s Primal Fear, in which he played an altar boy accused of murder. His second Oscar nomination came two years later, when he played a white supremacist who finds redemption in prison. He is once again imprisoned as the title character in this psychological drama, an arsonist hoping to be paroled after serving nearly a decade.

Reunited with his Painted Veil director John Curran, Norton gets to try out another accent of some sort that I found irritating. But then, this is not a movie for those who crave likable characters. Stone says things like “I don’t want no beef with you. I just want to be a vegetarian.” Norton/Stone mutters this under his breath, so it doesn’t sound as silly as it reads. He’s talking to Jack (Robert De Niro), the man who will decide whether to make Stone a free man. De Niro isn’t likable either, as our view of him is colored by the first scene in the movie, a flashback in which Jack makes a violent threat to prevent his wife (played by Frances Conroy in the later scenes) from leaving. Also not likable is Stone’s wife (Milla Jovovich), a teacher who sets out to “talk” with Jack on behalf of her husband. Her transparently fakery made me also irritated by her, or more so by Jack’s apparent blindness to her attempts to manipulate him.

What might be a setup for an intense thriller is instead a morality drama. The script by Angus MacLachlan, who wrote the delightful Junebug, paints Stone as a kind of mirror for Jack, whose job is to determine whether others are good, who admires goodness but doesn’t understand it. Religion is a theme in the movie. Jack and his wife listen faithfully to a radio preacher, but he has doubts that seem to stem as much from his own failings as those he sees in others. Both male characters are intended to be ambiguous. Stone seems simultaneously coy and honest, and a little crazy; we have no idea whether he will re-offend if released. What seems ambiguous to some may seem underwritten to others. The relationships between the two men and their wives remain mysterious, and Conroy is a good actress (and the most sympathetic character) whose role—the long-suffering spouse—could have been profitably expanded.

IMDB link

viewed 11/11/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/11 and 11/15/10