The Last Castle Review
By Joe Lozito
Slight "Castle"
In the Hollywood pantheon of stock characters, "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" is followed closely by "The Sensitive, Brooding Military Man". For a definitive example of this, see Robert Redford's performance in Rod Lurie's prison drama "The Last Castle". Mr. Redford's three-star General Eugene Irwin is a war hero so renown that - even after he is thrown in prison - his inmates can't stop saluting him. The reason for his incarceration is appropriately borderline. Yes, he committed a crime, but he did what he knew was right (another Hollywood staple). The prison is populated with a typical array of stock characters - the stutterer, the gambler, the strongman, etc.
It's a tribute to Mr. Redford's star power, even at 64, that he can still make this role work. Mr. Redford has not seemed quite so at ease in a role since his 1992 trifle "Sneakers". He never quite feels like a General, he seems more like the Sundance Kid if he'd been caught, but Mr. Redford is so magnetic that you're willing to watch him anyway.
James Gandolfini, rejecting everything Tony Soprano about himself, plays Irwin's nemesis Colonel Winter. Mr. Gandolfini gives a more subtle performance here, until a final act that nearly unleashes his trademark Mafia snarl. The scenes between the two men are fun to watch, but the film's final revolt scene contains so many out-of-left-field, improvised weapons that the film almost becomes a parody of itself.
Mr. Lurie, who seems more at home in the political world of last year's "The Contender", working from a script by David Scarpa, never creates the emotional tension necessary to propel a story like this to the height of a "Great Escape" or "Cool Hand Luke". The story is too by-the-numbers and the villains too black-and-white. When it finally comes down to the climax, there's never a doubt who is in control and who will prevail.
