'Stone' a hard drama to embrace
To watch Robert De Niro and Edward Norton arguably two of the best film actors of their respective generations play characters verbally wrestling each other for control of a simple conversation becomes one of the few fascinations in “Stone.
Norton plays Gerald Creeson, a tattooed, cornrowed convict up for possible parole from his sentence for helping kill his grandparents and torch their house to cover up the crime.
He goes by the name Stone.
De Niro plays Jack Mabry, a paunchy, middle-aged probation officer who postpones his impending retirement to hear one last request for clemency, from Creeson.
The two men sit across from each other and talk.
One's a very tired bureaucrat stuck in a lifeless marriage to a wife named Madylyn (Frances Conroy).
The other is a manipulative survivor who doesn't think twice about getting his hot girlfriend Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) to use her feminine wiles to convince Mabry to recommend Creeson for parole.
“Stone, directed by John “The Painted Veil Curran, has the makings for a hot-and-bothered skin flick playing on a late-night cable channel.
But “Stone closer simulates an intimate character-driven stage play captured on film.
The domestic drama, the opening night offering last week at the Chicago International Film Festival, is all about how the undermining power of denial can ruin healthy lives.
It has ruined four in this movie alone.
“Stone opens with a shocking moment from Mabry's past. Young, new mother Madylyn (now played by Pepper Binkley) tries to escape her suffocating life with her uncommunicative husband, and prepares to leave him.
Mabry (now played by Enver Gjokaj) holds their baby out a second-story window. His terms are brutal and succinct: Leave him and he'll drop the baby.
And he means it.
I wish Angus MacLachlan's screenplay had stayed with Mabry's marriage as its central focus, because their relationship not the one between Mabry and Creeson is the more fascinating of the two and deserves more exploration.
Conroy's performance easily matches De Niro's in understated disappointment and pain.
Their marriage is a tragic and heart-ripping disaster between a man unable to articulate his needs and desires, and a woman emotionally bludgeoned into staying with him against her will.
On the other hand, it's hard to resist the tension-escalating faceoffs between the prisoner and the parole officer, especially after the seemingly virtuous Mabry becomes entangled in Lucetta's tawdry, graphic seductions.
“Stone comes equipped with a strange Greek chorus: a recurring car radio broadcast ripe with religious programming and right-wing political commentary.
It plays every time Mabry drives some place, especially when he goes to visit Lucetta.
In prison, Creeson also uses religion, but as a gimmick to garner sympathy for his release. Then, to his surprise, he becomes a believer in a story twist that does not necessarily advance the story.
A physical altercation between Creeson and Mabry feels forced. Jovovich's role is comparatively thin and weak.
So, “Stone can be relished for its better parts, but the whole builds to an underwhelming, rocky finale.
'Stone'
<p>Rating: ★ ★ ½ </p>
<p>Starring: Edward Norton, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Milla Jovovich</p>
<p>Directed by: John Curran</p>
<p>Other: An Overture Films release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 105 minutes.</p>