First Hit: The characters seem so tightly wound around the axle at the beginning that my anticipation of what would happen was not met.
The opening scene has a young married man controlling his wife by hanging their baby outside a two story window and saying if you leave me I’ll drop him.
Then we move to this man Jack (played by Robert De Niro) as a nearly retired prison parole officer who interviews and speaks with prisoners determining whether they should get parole or not.
Enter Stone (played by Edward Norton) who wants out, doesn’t give a shit, and obsessed with his own story being the truth. Stone uses his hardness and mental strength to control people. Stone is married to Lucetta (played by Milla Jovovich) who wants her husband out of prison, but also sleeps with other men and controls things around her with her sexy beauty.
This film is uneven and I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense. At times it is about the seductive qualities of a beautiful woman, at other times it tries to use the power of being deeply touched spiritually, at other times it is about whom is the most articulate.
As you would have expected from the beginning, Jack gets controlled by a beautiful woman and Stone’s relentless drive.
De Niro is not overly engaging in this film and his actions with Lucetta weren’t well planned by the writer and director. It seemed clunky. Norton pulls some accent/dialog usage which has him being incongruent with the intelligence in his eyes; it like he was too smart for the role. Jovovich is beautiful and she is fully engaging when she is on the screen. She plays an excellent seductress and carries the intelligence in her eyes saying she knew what she was doing the whole time and that no one controls her. Angus MacLachlan wrote this and there are moments of interesting dialogue between Norton and De Niro. John Curran directed this and I’m not sure he was clear about what he wanted from each one of the characters or they (the actors) ran the show.
Overall: A mediocre film not worthy of the actors in it.