User reviews

De Niro , Norton and Jovovich . Quite the cast I'd say , but thats all there is to it .

The start is really interesting , both De Niro and Norton giving top notch performances . But then everything is lost as the movie looses focus and struggles to define itself . What starts of as a thriller goes nowhere trying to answer existential questions . No character is developed enough , the background stories clumsy and incomplete and thats in my opinion what killed this movie . No cohesion and a weak ending is the coup de grace .

Edward Norton is one of my favorite actors , so is De Niro . Im so disappointed that this didn't work out .

Greetings again from the darkness. Psychological Thrillers have long been my favorite genre of film. The best ones cause us to examine our own thoughts while analyzing the actions of others we probably don't quite understand. Unfortunately, most scripts fall short in complexity and stimulation, and leave us with a half-empty character study. Director John Curran (The Painted Veil) and writer Angus MacLachlan (the superb Junebug) offer up a just-miss.

Robert DeNiro plays a parole officer on the brink of retirement. He is the guy that lives and works by the book to suppress his inner demons of which we get a glimpse in the film's opening. Despite the horror, he and his wife stay married for decades ... the relationship is built on a false worship of scripture and plenty of nerve-deadening booze. DeNiro decides to finish out his current files, one of which belongs to Edward Norton. He is an 8 year convict, serving a sentence for a crime that ended with the death of his grandparents.

The real fun begins when Norton enlists his schoolteacher wife, played by Milla Jovovich, to invade DeNiro's cold facade. So really what we have is: DeNiro trying not to feel anything, Norton trying to pull one over on DeNiro either by himself or with his wife, and Jovovich trying desperately to obey her husband while playing evil mind and body games with DeNiro. This is the point I like to call "the table is set".

Unfortunately, none of these story lines really go deep. The best seems to be Jovovich and DeNiro, but even that falls short of real grit. So much potential here and the actors all seem up for anything. It's just the script lets them off easy.

Frances Conroy is excellent as DeNiro's wife whose had her soul locked away. We never really get the full scoop on the Norton/Jovovich connection, but by the end, that doesn't seem to matter. Is the film watchable? Yes. Could it have offered more deliciously evil interaction between these characters? Absolutely.

I have never heard of this movie until it came to my local theater. With a A-list star line up such as DeNiro, Norton and Jovovich how could this movie miss. I was wrong. It did. Those who appreciate great acting in a movie won't be disappointed. (Did you ever see a movie Edward Norton was in that he wasn't absolutely great..well, maybe a couple that he may have did for the just the money..lol. His absolute best was "American History X") The movie itself moved along a pace that one keeps looking at his/her watch waiting for the ending. And the ending, again, is the latest Hollywood type...it sucks. Storyline was interesting but never got you interested to a point where one found it entertaining. This was a 98% dialog movie. You could be listening to this entire movie and never watch the video portion and understand the entire script. I am a big fan of Norton and Jovovich but this movie I could have passed on.

This film is about a parole officer who is about to retire. He works on whether an arsonist should be released or not, which leads to undesired consequences.

"Stone" sounds like a crime thriller on paper, but it just what it is not. It is so slow moving, that the first seduction by Milla Jovovich happens forty minutes into the film. Just when the seduction subplot starts to pick up, suddenly the film becomes religious. Then suddenly the wife has gone crazy. The plot is all over the place, lacking in focus and clarity. It cannot decide whether it wants to be a thriller or drama. As a result, "Stone" is so boring, literally making my eyelids as heavy as stones.

Deniro and Norton, back together again. Stone's first two acts are great. You're intrigued, it's unpredictable, and interesting. But the third act leaves you confused and almost unaffected by the story at the end. Stone (norton) is up for parole and wants to get out. Why not throw his sex-crazed wife (jocovich) in front of Jack's (Deniro) feet. But one of these three is starting to see life under a new life. How will this play out? Norton was great but nothing spectacular. Will remind you of his primal fear days. But what makes his performance so good is how he makes his character so likable considering the ridiculous offensive lines that come out of his mouth.

I don't think they went far enough with Deniro's character. It wasn't written well enough. It starts off with a flashback on his broken relationship with his wife and what extremes he goes to keep her. But this ins't really paid off well in the film.

Interesting film. Not predictable. Good performances. Less than mediocre writing.

My verdict B/C

Filmmaking 101 has a rule; wait, Art 101 has a rule: Know your genre. A drama can have comic relief, but that works only in the framework of the genre that's been established. Comedies can have their dramatic, emotional moments, but if they then turn into dramas, audiences are confused and disappointed. If a screenwriter and director can't even tell their story competently within the confines of the genre they first set up, their movie will fail.

Yes, Stone is well acted. So what? Do you go to the movies to see good acting class exercises? If so, check this movie out. Norton and De Niro are entertaining, early on at least, and there's sharp dialog they have to work with (how else could they do their jobs? Don't you love people who praise the acting without acknowledging the script?)

But the story – the real reason most of us venture out to see a film – in Stoner is a mess. The movie starts off essentially as a thriller. The plot sets up a con working a con, with his sexy wife, on a prison case officer. But after putting the movie is thriller mode the movie then tries to be a drama about the meaning of life and presence of God. The movie tries to turn its main plot with the wife into a subplot, and then pretend that fun, salacious venture wasn't really what the movie wanted to deal with. No, let's talk about the meaning of life.

Stone, then, is a disappointment. Even as a drama it fails: the story dissipates into ambiguity with regard to the final action. POVs have jumped around all throughout the movie but in not showing us the final resolution between Stone and his wife, the whole fulcrum of the movie is left blank. As for the transformation of Stone – something Norton tries to act by occasionally calming his voice and widening his eyes – it's unbelievable, not fully formed or demonstrated and, like the rest of the movie, a pretentious attempt to take a fun dime-store novel's story and make it profound.

Don't waste your time or money with this one. If you have to see it, wait for video. The movie is shot in TV-like close-ups for the most part and it will play just as well there.

A prison psychologist (Robert DeNiro) has the final interview of his career, with a man called Stone (Edward Norton). Things get more complicated when Stone starts finding religion and Stone's wife (Milla Jovovich) uses her charms to influence the psychologist.

Other reviews have called this film "pretentious" and I am going to follow their lead. I feel like the story was going to go somewhere and just did not go there, or the writer had a message to share with us, but it was either missed or not as big as I expected. So, maybe pretentious is a harsh word, but until shown otherwise, I am going to go with it.

My other big problem with the film is that it is clearly called a "thriller" by pretty much everybody, and I do not know how that was placed on it. There are no thrills to this film. Suspense maybe, tension maybe... but no real thrills. It is a pretty tame film, more a drama than anything.

I feel that the film tries to explore spirituality and fails. There is a background of church radio, Stone's search for understanding, and some Bible passages... but I was waiting for it to come together and it really just did not ever do it. There was no firm Christian or anti-Christian message. There was some talk of morality, but it was very jaded.

DeNiro gives a great performance, Norton's is not top-notch (I never really believed he was what he appeared to be). Milla is tough to pinpoint. Some have called her performance "raw", but I think that is just a polite way of saying she gets naked. She plays her character well, but it is a shame to see her so dumb-down when she can play such strong, independent women.

I think this film meant well, and they gave it a good shot, but it just fell short in a bunch of places. The performances were not what I wanted to see, the story has enough holes that I do not feel it is complete or tells a story that goes somewhere. In the end, I felt empty inside. Whatever I was supposed to get out of this, I did not get.

"Stone" is a messed up film. I would like to say that I don't know what the story was about, but that's not really true as it was a very simplistic plot. Edward Norton is a convicted criminal up for parole, overseen by parole officer Robert De Niro. It's not so much that the story is hard to understand, more so that nothing actually happens.

It's dialogue-heavy as Norton philosophizes his way to freedom, and it's supposed to be character-rich as we watch De Niro try to remain sane as both Norton and his wife Milla Jovovich work their angles on him. But these are just messed up characters that I knew less about at the end than I did at the beginning. The film has clear problems when the only somewhat likable character is the guiltless criminal Norton. But I would say it's bigger problems are with the fact that it's supposed to be a thriller, but all you have is De Niro and Norton jabbering back and forth until nothing is clear and very little of consequence or action occurs. There is even a religious undertone to the whole film, but I have no idea what they were trying to say with that.

I'm sure De Niro and Norton deliver great performances as they always do, but when their characters are poorly written and make no sense, you can't watch a film for the acting. The director was overly concerned with detail, framing every scene and adding nuance to each shot, which is great in some films, but in "Stone", it would have served him better to just try and tell a story from beginning to end.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Parole officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) is very near retirement and certainly has no longing for anything that could upset his system too much. So it's unfortunate for him that he crosses paths with Gerald Creeson (Edward Norton) a convicted arsonist coming up for parole after serving a long stretch for manslaughter. Creeson takes him on a journey of awakening and enlightenment with his attempts to improve himself and things are further complicated when his lover Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) approaches him and they find themselves embarking on an affair.

Here's a sleek, glossy looking film with a big name star list that's found it's way straight to DVD. Not a fate it's fully deserving of, but Stone is still an anti-climactic none event of a film, unsure of the direction it's heading in and unable to engage as fully as it should as a result. Despite reliably stellar performances from lead stars De Niro and Norton (you wish they could have worked together in something more dynamite) and a quiet, haunting atmosphere and use of slow motion camera shots and the sound being drowned out, the film meanders uncertainly between drama and thriller territory, leaving the viewer without a clear narrative to follow and having less of an impact as a result. A number of sub plots are left undeveloped, which could have given the film more background and depth, and so the end impression does feel a little sloppy and messy. Which is a shame, as this really isn't a bad film, just one that never allows itself to develop into the sum of it's parts.

De Niro is making far worse stuff than this nowadays, but it seems even when something that sparks of quality comes his way, it never manages to come off like it would of in his heyday. ***

This film has: an extremely convincing performance of nearly all of the main actors. Particularly noteworthy is Bob de Niro "comeback" after all the despicable "lati-grobman"-produced mediocre disappointing films, he finally managed to give a performance of his Golden Years. Lee Strasberg could have been proud of him here. De Niro's acting in this feature can be put in line with all his major dramatic achievements (Deer Hunter, etc). The main problem with this film is what I call the "no-story-thing". The script is so weak as if non existent. I'd like to pose the obvious questions: *Who* the de Niro's character is? What was the historic psychological dramatic crime he had committed in his younger years that made his wife wanting the separation? I am 100% sure that de Niros' character is in no way "accomplished" in the film. It is simply too inconsistent and unconvincingly odd. The same goes for Mila Jovovich character. Mila delivered here one of the best dramatic performances in her entire cinematic career, that is true. But Mila's character is also remarkably unclear, it is far too contradictory and inconsistent as well. We do not understand *why* she behaves the way she does, we do not understand what she feels about her troubled husband. If she is a psycho-prostitute or a cheap call-girl, that should have been stated more clearly. The film lacks any message, any consistent line or a well-elaborated "story". The script seems to be too poorly orchestrated. There are too many unexplained details that are altogether "too odd to be missed" and at the same time clearly do not indicate anything meaningful. Like, why the wife of de Niro's character must have "different-sized" eyes; does this "eye disease" connote something particular, or is just another accidental sloppy "oddness"? The film leads its viewer nowhere, the director has no message to tell to his viewers, and the way the movie ends only strengthens the feeling that the scriptwriter and the director simply did not know what to do with it, the ending is a CLEAR regrettable fiasco.

How do we make sense of our lives and keep going despite all the bad things that happen to us? Most people find the answers to those questions in religion, and the characters in this film line up like a rainbow of answers: Jack (DeNiro), a prison bureaucrat, is agnostic; his wife Madylyn (Conroy) is a mainline Protestant; Stone (Norton) is a convict but also a seeker who finds his answers in a New Age religion; his wife (Jovovich) is an unabashed atheist. Throughout the film, evangelical radio frequently plays in the background, another stripe in the religious rainbow.

As a miserable young Madylyn hints to the viewers in the first scene of the film, the prison setting is a metaphor of the dungeon of the soul. For these four characters, loveless marriages, life work that seems futile, and memories of violence are their dungeon walls. Jack, Madylyn, and Stone all struggle with depression. Stone's is so deep that he edges toward suicide, but he searches for answers among the religious readings in the prison library and finds one that makes sense, especially after he witnesses a brutal stabbing at a range so close that the blood spatters his own face and he sees the murdered man eye to eye.

Jack seeks pastoral counseling after church one Sunday, admitting finally that the Episcopal framework of his life has never made sense. The minister quotes the Bible to him, "Be still and know that I am God," that is, listen for the answers that God provides. Oddly, that is exactly the prescription that Stone gets from his new religion too. It teaches that "God" or Truth speaks to us through everyday noises – insects buzzing, the voices of a prison exercise yard, talk radio, or a spoken mantra – if we just listen to the universe.

Stone does listen, and he begins to change. His new hairstyle, speech, and demeanor all signal to the viewer that he is a man reborn. The prison walls within Stone's mind fall away so that by the time his parole is finally granted, it hardly matters to him anymore.

Jack, meanwhile, hears nothing in the noise of his troubled life, nor can he makes sense of what Stone tries to share with him. As his retirement nears, he grows more and more reckless. Blind to the transformation that Stone has undergone, Jack suspects that he is being played. To the end, Jack remains suspicious and fearful of Stone who has come to terms with this past and feels only gratitude toward the aging jailer.

If you are looking for a conventional action flick with good guys and bad guys, this is not it. If you want an intelligent film about how desperate people search for faith and solace, you will not be disappointed.

This is possibly the worst movie ever made. Imagine how bad it must be if I say that even though actors as Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, and Milla Jovovic are in it! It is absolutely about nothing,there's no plot whatsoever, Edward Norton plays an annoying and not very believable character, Robert de Niro a depressing and depressed old man, and Milla just flashes her tits and that's it. It's a 2 hour torture to sit down and watch this movie. It is sooo slow that you just can't help but drift off. I seriously have no idea what the point was of this totally worthless movie, why people invested money in it, and more than anything, why normally great actors choose the roll! Do not go and see this, ever!

The basis of the story is quite simple (read the synopsis), but the majority of the film's focus is in its character study. This is where the actors seriously shine. That seems to be the issue with most of the negative responses the film received. Yes, it is slow paced. Yes, there's a lot of religious jargon thrown around. Yes, it is quite the anti- climactic film. But isn't that the point? De Niro, who I haven't seen in anything memorable after Jackie Brown (okay, I'll exclude The Good Shepherd), is marvelous as the underplayed Jack Mabrey. The subtle nuances he gives to a character so burned out of work, marriage -sidenote: Frances Conroy was amazing-, and life in general (the speech he gives at his brother's funeral in the beginning comes to mind) are nothing short of astonishing. I can't stress on how great the performance was, De Niro has definitely gone back on track.

***SPOILERS*** In what seems like a replay of his role as Adam Stampler in the 1996 thriller "Primal Fear" Edward Norton, no relations to Ed Norton of the 1950's "The Honeymooners" TV series, plays convicted arsonist Gerald "Stone" Creeson who's now up for parole after serving 8 of his 10 to 15 year sentence. Creeson's parole Officer Jack Mabry, Robert De Niro, is about to put in his retirement papers and this is just, that's what he thinks, another menial case for him as he goes through the motions in processing it. As things turn out this nothing of a case will end up screwing up Mabry's life big time! In it bringing out all the skeletons he's been hiding in his closet for the last 40 some years.

Creeson at first giving no intentions to parole officer Mabry that he's interested in being released soon starts to change his mind when he presses a few of his buttons about his shoddy and forbidden past. Knowing that Mabey has far bigger problems then he does Creeson starts to dig deep into his troubled life that makes the whole parole hearing about himself totally insignificant! It's now Mabry that's on the hot seat not convicted arsonist Creeson and what's even worse Mabry knows it! Getting his child like and very sexy wife Lucette, Milla Jovovich, involved Creeson opens up an two front attack on the clueless Mabry who, despite his some 40 years experience as a parole officer, naively falls for it!

It's when Mabry gets romantically involved with Lucette that her imprisoned husband Gerald, who's insists on being called Stone, finally gets the goods on him. Having sex with the wife of a man that he's to judge if he's eligible for parole or not is a big "No No" in the prison system and that's exactly what the not so bright Mabry has been doing! It can not only get him fired and lose his pension but thrown behind bars as well! Finally knowing that he's been had Mabry has no choice but to recommend Creeson's parole in him feeling that he's not really ready to be free in a society that he so skillfully manipulated both in as well as behind bars!

***SPOILERS*** There's still more to this movie then what you've already seen in how Jack Mabry's life as well as abused wife Madlyn, Frances Conroy, completely go up in flames. Madlyn a church going bible toter loses it and starts to swear like a drunken sailor out on shore leave. And later, even though it's not exactly proved,sets the house on fire feeling that it's the Lords work to punish both her and her husband Jack! As for Jack Marby he also completely loses it and tried to get even with Cresson, who's now out on parole, by cornering him in a dark alley and trying to blow his brains out! As we see it's Mabry who needs help, serious psychiatric help, not Gerald "Stone' Creeson who's now a completely rehabilitated law abiding citizen. But all that at the expense of the total mental breakdown of his now committable parole officer, as well as his wife Madlyn , Jack Mabry!

Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) is a complicated man. As a young father, he hangs his daughter out the window to force his wife Madylyn (Frances Conroy) to stay. He has a few weeks before retirement as the prison parole eligibility officer. One of his last cases is Gerald 'Stone' Creeson (Edward Norton). He's combative but also demanding to get out early. He gets his wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) to seduce Mabry.

De Niro and Norton get a couple of interesting characters to work with. This seems to be set up for some great acting and intense character drama. I do like the interactions between the two leads. Jovovich is able to keep up. It stumbles here and there. I don't really get the mishmash of religion in this. I think this could have been award winning performances if the movie is better written.

Stone has a very intriguing first act--carefully setting up its characters and situations--leading into a very interesting development in its second act--only to completely blow its momentum by shifting focus completely away from Stone in its third act. (why would a movie called Stone not be about the character who's named Stone???)

Ed Norton as the cornrows wearing ex-con seeking spiritual enlightenment is actually pretty believable once you get past the fact that its Ed Norton (which i didn't have any trouble doing past the first scene--i thought he was fine.) Robert De Niro seems to be sleepwalking yet again at first, but in this case its his character who's sleepwalking as that seems to be his default setting in life. His performance isn't bad either--and the early scenes of the 2 men playing off each other hold a lot of promise...even if De Niro's character is more or less the kind of character he used to play a lot more often

(it actually reminded me of Robert Duvall's character in Get Low--De Niro's character is a hermit here too, defined primarily by the guilt he may or may not feel over an act of seeming violence he may have committed as a young man--which is incidentally the opening scene of this film--again mirroring the opening scene of Get Low which also features an act of cowardice that comes to define Duvall's life of solitude--- De Niro's character doesn't really communicate with many people--even the wife he lives with--and the movie's content and pacing isn't unlike Get Low either as its essentially about the re-awakening of an old hermit to his life--although this is certainly a much more pessimistic movie overall...much more so.) So the first act is mostly De Niro trying to figure Stone out--and Stone tries to assess what De Niro's weakness might be...and how he can try and exploit it. These scenes are solid..and leave you wanting more--and soon we get the introduction of Norton's wife who seems like she'll do anything to help her husband get out....and its here where the film's first problem pops up---how exactly does Mila Jovovitch manage to coax De Niro out of his shell again?!?!?!? we see scenes of her frantically trying to get his attention and him actively resisting--but then before you know it--he's engaging with her--and maybe i missed how she got to him--but i didn't quite understand what or how De Niro finally got coaxed out of his shell...or what it is that sends him fleeing right back into it more then halfway through. Meanwhile the film has had a recurring shots of De Niro listening to this religious radio station on his car on the way to and from work--and we hear the DJ talking about sin, and salvation, and what a person can do to try and salvage his prior acts to make himself whole again...it makes sense within the film as De Niro and Norton have been almost exclusively talking about Norton's shame and any possible sense of remorse Stone may or theoretically should feel if he really wants the parole he's seeking.

Film then tries to pull everything together by having Stone actually attain the religious enlightenment he had actively been seeking out (!!!!)---much to De Niro's confusion, and increasing anger. This is a very interesting development- both for the characters and for the film-and the handful of scenes that focus on Norton's new found enlightenment are very interesting to observe--and personally i felt that the film should have really dug deep into Stone's new found sense of self more then it does. The film kind of takes it for granted that Stone is more or less comfortable in his newfound sense of self worth and more or less spends the rest of the film with De Niro's increasingly agitated parole officer. Stone's serenity is very much aggravating De Niro and the third act seems to be about how De Niro reactions to Stone's personality seems to change his own life for the worse.

Once again sadly for a film titled Stone--the movie doesn't seem to focus too much on Stone--choosing instead to try and go overly in-depth on the only major character in the movie who's not named Stone. I don't want to say that this is a mistake--as De Niro's character is the one with the more potentially bottled up rage inside him--but i feel as a character---De Niro's corrections officer is just not all that interesting enough to sustain viewer interest. The character is kind of rock stubborn and resistant to any change whatsoever--so in a sense he is the stone of the title as well--but this idea of De Niro's character being the one that really needs the enlightenment and failing to achieve it never quite comes off as being anywhere near interesting or moving enough the way that it should in order for the actions De Niro's character takes towards the end of the movie to really land. De Niro's character's actions make sense emotionally, but not so much logically--which may in fact be the point the film's trying to make altogether but by this point--the film's already lost me to questions about what happened to Stone and how come he's suddenly not on screen anymore? Its a very nice mood piece overall--and the 2 leads are fine and all--but as the film goes on and the focus shifts more and more towards De Niro's parole officer (which to be honest it pretty much has been for most of the film already) and less and less on Norton's unique prisoner-dropping him from long stretches in the last half hour altogether-the film gets more and more problematic--and less and less interesting. See it if you like either of the 2 leads for sure, but otherwise you might be disappointed.

Robert De Niro is a prole officer living his life completely by wrote, afraid of his internal violence. (We kind of see this in an opening scene with younger stand-ins for De Niro and his wife Frances Conroy). He goes to church regularly and does Bible studies with Conroy, and the two quietly drink themselves into a stupor every evening.

De Niro is nearing retirement, but one of his last cases is Edward Norton, a convict serving a 10 year sentence for involvement in the murder of his own grandparents. Norton is more than a little slick and tries to play De Niro, but can't get through his "by the book" exterior. He sics his wife Milla Jovovich on him to attempt to seduce and compromise his integrity.

This is a frustrating film because it has something like the makings of a really good film, but it just fails to deliver on pretty much anything. It has SERIOUS THEMES. It has more SERIOUS THEMES than it knows what to do with. At the heart of the film is the suggestion that ... perhaps ... people with deep spiritual holes try to fill them with religion of some sort, but halfhearted religious observance does nothing for them. (Or it thinks that all religion is an attempt to fill spiritual holes ... hard to really say.) What the film really fails to do is anything beyond raising themes and then letting them just kind lie there flopping around.

It doesn't help that neither De Niro nor Norton are very good here. De Niro is walking through the motions of playing someone walking through the motions. Norton's performance feels like an imitation of a prisoner he met somewhere. I'm not certain if it's really their fault, since the movie really just gestures at the interiority of it's characters, so it's unclear if they really had anything to work with.

When reading the ratings and reviews of this film I believe that some viewers went in expecting something different. I can fully understand that it wasn't for everyone. The film surprised me as to how non typical it was in its plotting but it was the best character study in a long time.

Jack(Deniro) is about to retire but requests that he can finish his final convicts paroles. Stone(Norton) is one of those convicts. Stone starts as a character who wants out of prison but not for the reasons a parole officer would want. The plot is seemingly straight forward in its setup. Mila Jovavich gives a wonderful performance, most notably because the audience is never really clear on which direction she is taking in her motivation. Its not a trait to make her more of a suspenseful character, its to show how one dimensional her relationship really is with Stone.

The essential plot setup is Jovavich and Stone decide on a plan to seduce Jack so that the parole is a must. The problem is that once this starts, Stone begins to experience change. As does Jack. I will not go into it much more. The film relies on the characters emotions rather than intense cat and mouse games. The film sets the audience to follow the "good guy" (Deniro) but it challenges the audience later to decide really who to trust.

The most interesting aspect is that Jack is content when listening to Stone's problems but when Stone begins to change, Jack is not alright with it. The years of holding back his darkness cannot stay contained when he is not judging others.

The film is definitely one to be analyzed. This could be why the reception is severely mixed. It had a profound effect on emotion. No specific type except dread and in some cases, familiar motives.

The film cannot be reviewed without a depth of character discussion, so in this case check the film out. Just do not expect typical suspense thrillers Hollywood has given. Ignore the rating until you view it yourself. And if nothing seems to get your interest, just expect great performances for Deniro, Jovavich, and Norton.

Director John Curran missteps here. Like his previous film, The Painted Veil, there is too much emphasis put on being smart here and what should be a clear and strong story of a parole officer and a prisoner and the prisoner's wife and their relationships is over-confusing and frankly, dull.

One sees influences, for example Malick, particularly in the contrast of spaces, and Altman in the use of sound, but it is in both these areas where Stone is at its weakest. Sound in particular is over-over- edited in Stone - we go from no sound at the Maybry house to constant overlapping tracks at the prison, which should work well, that seems right, but instead detracts. The viewer is assaulted constantly by devices that disorientate. In addition the constant use of close-up, with little or no medium shots in the conversations becomes deadening.

Writer, Angus Machlahan, who wrote the excellent Junebug, has conversations that are good but where is a rigorous editing process - at an hour and 45 this stretches the goodwill of even the most attentive viewer- we are really watching theater and not film here.

It is the performances that should shine and to an extent they do - but, we are mainly left, frankly, bored. I was waiting to understand how a man of 43 years marriage would fall for Milla Jovovich's Lucetta - and I, for one, couldn't make the leap. Sexy just wasn't the quality that I suspect Robert De Niro's Jack has in his top 10 list of what to look for in a woman. In addition, De Niro lacks gravitas here and Norton is clearly the better actor - and that maybe heresy - but we all felt the power lacking in De Niro's performance acutely. The strange thing is that we all recognized that there is more going on here from De Niro, but for all of us, it still was just not a good, let alone great, performance. Norton gets the character with all the ticks and of course that's easier but here just seems more committed to the process.

All in all, a disappointment - the film opts for busy when simplicity would suffice, and when being simple and meditative fails to do more than intrigue. Above all it is over-edited and post-produced - so that the performances are sublimated by the after thoughts of the directing team.

Stone is simply a mess - too much script and way too much in the directing - it wants to be more but manages the awesome trick of making simple both overcomplicated and boring at the same time - and here the difference with Malick is obvious - Stone needs clarity to be clearer, to not try to fill in all the gaps with information - it needs to allow the viewer less interpretation in the mediative stretches, and needed less in the conversations - there are some excellent lines that are then spoiled by just going on and on.

Stone really needs to just get on with rewarding us with a film worthy of such a fantastic cast.