Jack Mabry knows rage. It's the 1960s or early '70s in the disconcerting opening scene to "Stone," and Jack is a young man (played for this brief sequence by Enver Gjokaj). But he already seems hard to the world, distant from his wife, full of an anger he cannot yet sublimate. When his wife broaches the idea of leaving him, Jack threatens to violate the family unit in the most fundamental way possible. One is assured that she will never ask the question again.
Perhaps to punish himself, perhaps because it's his only option, we next see Jack as a parole officer at a sprawling Midwestern prison. His wife, Madylyn, now played by the ever-bulletproof Frances Conroy, kills time drinking herself numb.
Jack is played at this point and for the rest of "Stone" by Robert De Niro. This is a mixed blessing.
For most of the past decade or so, De Niro has used his poker face for laughs, as in "Analyze This" and the "Meet the Parents" movies. This was probably a smart career move. But it makes it really tough to see him back in a straight dramatic role. His patina of potential violence is initially hard to take seriously when you start to hear him talk to prisoners in the same vice-principal tone he uses to say the word "Focker."
It's a testament to his skill that "Stone" isn't (completely) smashed to pieces on this fundamental problem. De Niro keeps a somber face, listens to near-Calvinist talk radio in his car and wears the heavy cast of a man who has done things in his life nobody could ever properly explain.
So when confronted with Gerald "Stone" Creeson (Edward Norton, really Methoding it up all over the place) - a convicted arsonist and possible murderer who seems to be undergoing a profound conversion experience - Jack is naturally skeptical. In Jack's world, nobody ever really changes, and there is no reason this doofus in corn rows should be any different.
Add to this Stone's wife, the seductive, sociopathic Lucetta (a surprisingly strong and often naked Milla Jovovich), who will do anything to help her man while Madylyn falls further into the bottle.
Writer Angus MacLachlan ("Junebug") and director John Curran ("The Painted Veil") never really decide what kind of movie they are making. Is it a noir, set in the American gothic of desolate Michigan? Is it a character piece, a meditation on the nature of good and evil, on crime and punishment? As Stone puts it, "How long you get to keep judging a person for a bad thing they've done?"
This is one of the all-time important questions, but "Stone" never really blends its moods to effectively answer it, or even frame it squarely. Norton and De Niro clearly care about the material, and Curran frames everything with austerity and restraint. But the pulp and the calm keep bumping into each other in odd ways. And for all of its grace notes, "Stone" can't quite find the right rhythm.
'Stone'
Our grade: B-
Genres: Drama, Thriller
Running Time: 105 min
MPAA rating: R
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