Castle Crumbles

At the end of Rod Lurie's The Last Castle, we are treated to a great big patriotic moment that in a pre-Sept. 11 world would seem incredibly false, insulting to our intelligence and so hokey that we'd forget some of the interesting character work that kept our attention for a slim majority of two hours. Instead, because of the terrorism, we are treated to a great big inspirational moment, reminding us that no matter how great our personal struggles are, the struggle of our newly challenged nation eclipses all other problems--past and present. It's still hokey, but it's powerful. The Last Castle may be the one thing that improved because of Sept. 11.

Robert Redford plays Eugene Irwin, a heroic former POW and general who has been sentenced to 10 years in a military prison. His crime is kept secret for half of the film, and when the cruel warden, Col. Winter (James Gandolfini), reveals his crime to the inmates, it goes off with a particularly loud silence. A lot more interesting story--to the audience and the inmates--would be how Winter ever obtained this cushy position: He's a combat virgin, he doesn't seem to have any kind of political pull or clout and his last name is not Bush.

Like any prison movie, the violent acts of the inmates pale in comparison to the treachery of the warden. Winter, unfortunately, is no exception to this overplayed, predictable character. Gandolfini gives a great effort and tries to fight against the paradigm, but director Lurie crushes any attempt at giving the villain his own personality. Winter has never fought, keeps a disdainful museum of war artifacts, listens to Salieri (instead of the superior Mozart), and the list goes on. He's a caricature of a second-comer. Mark Ruffalo, who plays the heartless-snitch-turned-leader character, also cannot escape the cookie-cutter mold. He tries, but every time his Yates starts to shake off the shell, it's as if the strings of bad directing are tightening.

This is not Lurie's first attempt at making a bad political film with a message more obvious and preachy than an entire season of The West Wing. He made last year's onus to feminism and orgies, The Contender. In The Contender, Lurie allowed lead Joan Allen lots of leeway in establishing her character. In this film, every actor, except for a surprisingly uninspiring Redford, seems to be more about creating the story than creating the people behind the story.

We are living in an age of real heroes, antiheroes and villains--we see them daily on the nightly news and are more fascinated by their personal stories than by the larger epic. Since Sept. 11, the "who" has mattered as much as or more than the "why." The Last Castle pulls off the "why," but because of the direction, you'll never remember the "who."

GRADE: C+