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Robert De Niro and Ed Norton reunite in the prison drama Stone.

By Maggie Scott

Robert De Niro is unquestionably one of America’s finest actors; and we’ve been privileged to see him on occasion in combination with two other great actors: Al Pacino and Sean Penn.

Now, with their sophomore effort, we can hail a new pairing that has an electricity that can jumpstart any film: De Niro and Edward Norton.  A leading duo  in  2001’s The Score, they are on powerful display, again, in the new drama, Stone, from director John Curran and writer Angus MacLachlan.

It’s not an easy story to digest at one sitting.  The action is filtered through ideas of, and characterizations dealing with, isolation, guilt, truth, faith.  The primary setting is in a prison.  But it’s soon obvious that it is not just a literal imprisonment that the story is dealing with, but also with the ways in which people imprison themselves in their dealings with others and with their conceptions of their lives and of themselves.

De Niro plays a man who evaluates prison inmates and their readiness for parole.  He’s weeks away from retirement, and it’s obvious that he’s burned out and cynical about the work he is doing.  From the initial scenes of Jack Mabry interviewing supplicant men seeking their freedom, it is obvious that he’s going through the motions.  He doesn’t appear to even hear them.

He’s become a paper shuffler, but a good one; writing up reports the warden praises.  Then, one day, in walks Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Norton):  A man who, at first blush, appears defensive and angry; poorly concealing how desperate he is to get out after eight years and harboring some cynicism of his own about the system.  This man Stone’s confronting has Stone’s fate in his hands.

But, seasoned as Mabry is at “reading” the inmates, it’s quickly apparent that Stone has got Mabry’s number: this man cannot throw the first stone (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”).  In the opening scenes of the movie, we’re introduced to the miserable marriage of Mabry and his wife Madylyn (Frances Conroy).  We’re not sure why there’s such a gulf between them, why he reinforces his rejection of her in countless ways that you can see are killing her soul with their thousand cuts.

During the course of Stone’s numerous parole hearing interviews, he begins to realize that what had been a stock observation on his part to goad Mabry was actually true: Jack Mabry is “as clean” as Stone.

Mabry may not have committed arson and been accessory to murder, like Stone; but he hasn’t “lived right.”  And, he’s vulnerable…to Stone’s gorgeous wife, Lucetta (Milla Jovovich), who wants her husband’s parole hearing to go his way.  At first, it seems to be a plot by the Stones; but as time goes by and Stone seems to be as interested in seeking a spiritual rebirth as he is interested in his freedom, it appears that Lucetta is engineering the irresistible pressure on Mabry to “help them.”

Intimations of blackmail and the utter ruination of what Lucetta says is a “good man,” preoccupies the viewer’s concentration, until nearly the end of the movie,  Then you realize there has been an about-face and Stone has turned out to be “the door” through which Mabry will step into a new, hopefully more truthful life.

While silence and sound are used to fascinating effect throughout the story, essentially it’s the underlying buzz generated by Norton and De Niro’s chemistry that you will not just hear, but feel, long after you’ve left the theatre.  Rated R for language, nudity, sexual content and violence.

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