Stone (2010–105 mins) R. De Niro, M. Jovovich, E. Norton

Stone is a dark character driven drama in which a criminal named Stone (Norton) is up for parole and is trying to use his wife (Jovovich) to influence his paroloe officer (De Niro) to approve his parole. Like most character driven dramas this one is short on the action but heavy on the story. This is a bit different then some of the movies that I saw lately, in that in others they are movies most will like that I did not as much. This film, I enjoyed it for the story, and also for the irony and subtext.

(Slight spoilers ahead so skip to Verdict if you want to know my final thoughts) De Niro’s parole officer is near retirement but is trying to hang on to see the last couple of cases to the end. He has a few demons of his own that we are allerted to early on but Stone’s wife (Jovovich) is able to further get through his defenses and get him to buy into her plan. She also is a bit messed up like Stone eludes to, and is really out only for herself. What this really brings about is that half way thru the movie we start to realize that with Stone finding some inner peace with religion that the prisoner is the only one who is truly not screwed up. It takes a man who screwed up once and came to terms with his mistake, to come out on the other side at peace and not still messed up. Whereas we now have the other two people in his life who are on the outside completely screwed up in life with no real end in sight for them. It’s this subtle irony that I found to be very interesting and hammered home the movie as a success to me. Granted it’s a bit dark and all and I will likely not see it again but I did think it was a good film.

Verdict–> This is a dark character driven drama which I enjoyed. I can describe it however as a movie lover’s movie. It’s not going to break any record for the most exciting or compelling movie out there, but for those of us who like heady intellectual drama’s it’s definately worth a watch. Decent mid range recommendation for the movie loving crowd, but not a date movie.

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