Review: 'Stone' Is An Moderately Intriguing, But Ultimately Not-Quite Satisfying Psychological Slow Burn

It's hard to know what to make of John Curran's unconventional dramatic psychological thriller "Stone" (which is only a "thriller" in the loosest sense of the term). Anchored by strong performances by its leads Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Frances Conroy and even Milla Jovovich who stands her ground amongst the two alpha males, the picture -- part mystery, part drama and part thriller with a hard-on for an atonement theme -- is admittedly a bit of a headscratcher that needs a minute to digest before one can lay judgment on it (which is always a good sign).

There's a lot to like and admire about this film in small doses. Once you get over the hilarity of the cornrows and the weird Southern gangster accent, Edward Norton shines as a manipulative convicted arsonist looking to play head games with his parole officer (DeNiro) by enabling a plan to secure his release by placing his seductress wife (Jovovich)in the lawman's path. DeNiro evinces his best dramatic work in years as the retiring officer who soon suffers a meltdown and crisis of faith in his own personal belief system. And always eager to bare skin, Jovovich convinces as the superficially endearing, but shrewd temptress.
Curran's direction (he helmed, "The Painted Veil" with Norton and the decent 2004 drama, "We Don't Live Here Anymore") " is mostly thoughtful and measured and there's little touches like an engrossing sound design which helps move the picture beyond its conventional-looking mien into something that occasionally becomes truly unorthodox and captivating. Assisting in blurring the lines between the unsettling sound design and disquieting musical score is a droning and pulsating experimental music-concrete-like sounds that we assume are Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke's musical contributions to the picture (and curiously enough, we could not find any traces of the duo in the picture's credits or press notes).

And the picture also exhibits a strong and ambiguous, if unsatisfying ending, but apart from that, "Stone" doesn't entirely convince and feels incredibly burdened under the weight of its religious themes of guilt, sin, atonement and redemption. Themes that are at once delicately handled and yet eventually sledgehammered over your head by repetition.

De Niro stars as Jack Mabry, a hard, unforgiving parole officer who is nearing retirement, but deigns to take on one more case (of course, it's always once more, isn't it?). Before all this however, the picture opens up in flashback, a young Mabry drinks and watches television in the 1960s ignoring his wife (later played by Conroy). Fed up, she threatens to leave and take their child and in a burst of outrage, and Mabry threatens to throw the child out the window if she leaves. But some things never change. We return to modern day with an older Mabry, still sitting in the same chair drinking and watching TV (yes, this is rather on the nose and rote).
Back to prison. This one last job turns out to be the case file of Gerald "Stone" Creeson (Norton), a man incarcerated for burning down his grandparents house after his cousin broke in and murdered them while they were whacked out on drugs. Eight years into his bid, the jive talking Creeson has had enough, claims he's a reformed man and wants to come home to his freak-nasty sex kitten wife Lucetta (Jovovich).

But the hardened parole officer is not really having any of Creeson's cunning, logic-hopping and tenuous justifications and makes him come talk for an hourly pseudo-therapy session for months before he makes any kind of decision. Starting to fray at the edges, Creeson hatches a plan for his wife to contact Mabry and convince him that Stone is a good man, and while misguided, the plan appears innocent at first. Though predictably, it goes in the sexual direction you assumed it might and Mabry then becomes involved in what appears to be an emotional blackmail scheme between the wife and husband.
The best sequences in the picture are simply the tête-à-tête's between Norton and De Niro with the two going at it and hashing it out in his office (oddly enough, a few of these scenes look like they're shot when both men weren't in the same room at the same time, but the editing preserves the edge of their contentious game of psychological ping-pong). Creeson begins to crawl inside the man's head, turning the tables on the lawman about his own sins and immoral trespasses and what was once a one-sided game becomes a psychological wound at which the convict chips away.

At the same time he manipulates, the conniving Creeson seems to be falling apart himself (or is he?). Eventually Creeson's anguish for freedom turns desperate and he starts to seek solace in a religion that asks one to listen, so as to be a "tuning fork of God." After attempting the practices of the religion, he reaches a state of enlightenment after watching a man get brutally stabbed to death. His state of zen then begins to unnerve Mabry who believes Creeson is further manipulating him with this a ruse of enlightenment, further frustrating him when he states that he no longer cares whether he is freed or not.

From there the picture builds to a climax of emotional distress and paranoia for Mabry as he is being played like a violin by both the now calm and contemplative husband and the wicked delilah who is more than happy to have the corrections officer come over for multiple visits. The last act of "Stone," while still intense and engrossing, seems to wobble towards the finish line and something's just not right about its uneven conclusion.

Written by Angus MacLachlan (who recently co-wrote "The Killer Inside Me"), the picture does possess a similar off-kilter tone which gives the neo-noir dark psychological shadings, but the ambiguity doesn't service the picture well. We're never quite clear what's ultimately in the head of the Norton's Stone and those mixed signals only add to the murkiness that clouds the pictures third act. The film seems to have a big twist near the end, but then it... doesn't?

While a thought-provoking meditation on indemnification and morality, "Stone" just can't seem to satisfyingly gel for any long periods of time. While the film has some tenors of "Primal Fear" (mostly in Norton's perfectly pitched performance) and does swell with a sense of danger (mostly in De Niro's increasingly unraveling character who loses his moral perspective along the way), it cant' sustain a consistent or convincing tone from start to finish, not to mention the ponderous ending that feels anticlimactic after Curran has successfully dialed up the tension in several scenes leading up to it. While the line between convict and lawmaker grow thinner and thinner throughout, the picture's examination of the iniquities of man doesn't provide much insight to truly chew on. [C+]