October 19, 2001 | Before he found respectable employment as a film director (The Contender, Deterrence), Rod Lurie made his living as a film critic. So I’m reasonably sure that he would agree with my assessment of his latest effort, The Last Castle, as unmistakably a movie made by people who have seen lots and lots of other movies.
The brazenly derivative screenplay credited to David Scarpa and Graham Yost recycles elements from Cool Hand Luke, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and even The Bridge on the River Kwai while spinning a briskly entertaining yarn about rebellion and redemption in a maximum-security military prison. Sharp-eyed cineastes may spot bits and pieces from other sources – so many, in fact, that I can imagine some graduate student deconstructing the movie in a graduate thesis.
Even so, much like Barry Levinson’s recent Bandits, which it resembles in few other respects, Last Castle manages to be more than the sum of second-hand parts. For that, much credit must go to Robert Redford, who strikes the perfect balance of reticence and authority, mystery and accessibility, in his best performance since his under-rated turn as a surprisingly honorable wastrel in Havana (1990).
Redford plays Eugene Irwin, a much-decorated three-star general who’s stripped of his rank and slapped with a 10-year sentence after disobeying direct orders during a combat mission and, worse, getting eight of his men killed in the process. Right away, the alarm bells go off in your head: Would a three-star general really wind up in the pokey? Wouldn’t he more likely be given a chance to simply resign his commission? To their credit, Lurie and his screenwriters takes pain to pre-empt our disbelief – and, while they’re at it, indicate Irwin’s remorse for his actions — by stressing that the general pled guilty at his court-martial. Which is why he winds up at a notorious military prison, aptly nicknamed The Castle, under the zero-tolerance command of Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini)
The usually authoritative Winter initially feels uneasy, even awkward, about overseeing the incarceration of a legendary officer and military strategist he greatly respects. (“They should be naming a base after him,” the colonel mutters to an orderly, “not sending him here.”) But then Irwin makes an off-hand remark about Winter’s collection of battle-related artifacts – the sorts of things, Irwin notes, prized by wanna-bes who have never experienced actual combat – and the colonel’s demeanor isn’t nearly so deferential anymore. He forgets all about asking Irwin to autograph a copy of the general’s best-known book, The Burden of Command, and devolves back into an uncompromising hard case.
In fact, Winter very quickly starts to treat Irwin the same way he treats the other prisoners. Specifically, like pawns to be manipulated for amusement. Or, when the colonel is in an especially nasty mood, like dirt.
Lurie renders his story in big, bold strokes of primary colors, occasionally managing the difficult feat of being quick-witted and heavy-handed at the same time. At first, I couldn’t figure out why the colonel, who likes to listen to classical music in his office while gazing through his window at his put-upon prisoners, played LPs instead of CDs. (Is this supposed to be a period piece, or what?) But then Lurie offered a quick cutaway to an album cover, to show that Winter favors music by Salieri – yes, the guy who always felt upstaged by the genius of Mozart in Amadeus — and I immediately realized that (a) Lurie wanted to nudge us with a character-revealing irony, and (b) the trick might not work so well if we had to read the small print on a CD case.
Outside of Winter’s office, Irwin inspires respect and admiration everywhere he turns, even among the inmates who place bets on whether he’ll crack and commit suicide. The gamblers are disappointed, but still respectful, when Irwin demonstrates the same stoic resilience that enabled him to survive long years in a POW camp during the Vietnam War. In a hokey but undeniably stirring sequence, the general hauls huge rocks to and fro in the prison yard as punishment for a rule infraction. (The rocks are used to repair a wall that has more symbolic weight than I really want to talk about.) He strips off his shirt, revealing the scars left by the unconscionable brutality he suffered as a prisoner of war. The other prisoners are duly impressed. Meanwhile, if you listen carefully, you can hear some admiring whispers in the audience: “Hey, for a 65-year-old dude, Redford doesn’t look half-bad.”
While Winter remains a sharp-eyed and increasingly resentful observer, even the roughest and toughest inmates begin to gravitate toward Irwin, responding to the general’s natural-born leadership. Irwin claims he doesn’t want to do anything but keep a low profile and serve his time. (Yeah, right.) But when Winter goes too far in his brutal attempts to douse the spirit of rebellion that Irwin inadvertently inspires – well, gosh, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, right?
The Last Castle is so unabashedly manipulative in so many respects that it’s almost shocking to note how frequently it dares to avoid seemingly mandatory clichés and conventions. The filmmakers refuse to let Irwin off too easily. When he’s paid a visit by his adult daughter (played, briefly but effectively, by Robin Wright Penn), the general doesn’t bother to dispute her claim that he’s been a fairly lousy father. More important, the movie implies that maybe he hasn’t been such a noble leader, either. Winter tries to turn the inmates against Irwin by claiming the general sacrificed the lives of eight men in a glory-grabbing gesture. Once again, Irwin doesn’t argue the point. In fact, the second half of The Last Castle can be read as Irwin’s attempt to expiate his guilt for his sins. A considerable amount of tension is generated by the pressing question: Just how far will he go to make amends?
Gandolfini slyly underplays Winter’s megalomania, and sounds more than reasonable at times when the colonel defends his brutal treatment of inmates as the only way to enforce discipline over prisoners who are, after all, highly trained soldiers. Only gradually do the cracks appear in his facade, allowing his barely contained fury to seep through.
Most of the other characters are familiar stock figures – the stuttering sacrificial lamb (Clifton Collins Jr.), the cynical wheeler-dealer who becomes a hero (Mark Ruffalo of You Can Count on Me), the underling who turns against his cruel commander (Steve Burton), etc. – and they’re played by actors who do the best they can with the little that they’re given. If Delroy Lindo stands out as a fellow general who wants the best for Irwin, but wants to follow the rules even more, that’s only because Lindo doesn’t wait for anybody to give him anything. He simply grabs The Last Castle with both fists, and very nearly snatches it away from Redford and Gandolfini. If he had one or two more scenes, he might still have the movie tucked away in his back pocket.
