What is Stone? At first, it appears to be an actors’ showcase, full of combustible two-handed scenes between Robert De Niro as a parole officer on the verge of retirement and Edward Norton as his final case, a cornrowed convict whose conceals his vulnerable, spiritual side under a lot of blaccented bluster. It’s one of those surprisingly articulate white-trash tough-guy roles that Norton has been drawn to throughout his career, from American History X to Leaves of Grass, as if in constant rebellion against his sweet-seeming, upstanding, prep-school appearance. (One wonders if Norton also took the role to test himself against De Niro—did it amuse him to be seeking parole from the man who played demonic Max Cady in Cape Fear?)
Soon, though, Stone seems ready to transform itself into a twisty, sexy crime picture with the introduction of Milla Jovovich as Norton’s wife, who remains so in love with her husband even nine years into his incarceration that she agrees to seduce De Niro in hopes that he’ll write Norton a favourable report—she’s like a more innocent, soulful version of Ali McGraw in The Getaway. But then Stone changes tacks yet again, and in its least successful final third, it becomes the meditation on religion and sin that it was always threatening to be: Norton takes up a New Age religion and becomes obsessed with tuning out the world’s noise and listening for the quiet signals God is trying to send him, while at the same time, De Niro begins questioning whether he really is as righteous a man as he’s always believed himself to be. And in the background, there’s Frances Conroy, cast in the Frances Conroy role as a meek wife trapped by a soulless marriage as well as a stifling moral code she has unthinkingly allowed to rule her life.
In other words, Stone is an actor’s film that turns into a writer’s film that turns into a director’s film. In the end, nobody wins—least of all director John Curran, who shares a fondness for off-kilter framing and random insert shots of birds and insects with Monster's Ball-era Marc Forster. The script is by Angus MacLachlan, who also wrote the superb comedy/drama Junebug; here, though, the themes of freedom and imprisonment seem strained, the final confrontations strenuously actory.
There are some small victories among the cast, however: Milla Jovovich deftly balances the strange mixture of carnality and unworldliness that allows her character to sleep with other men while remaining true to her husband in her heart; and Enver Gjokaj confirms the promise he demonstrated over the course of two seasons to an ever-tinier audience on TV’s Dollhouse in a powerful prologue scene as the young Robert De Niro. Indeed, if Stone is remembered for anything ten years from now, that might be the reason why—it was the first movie prescient enough to spot Gjokaj as De Niro's successor.
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