Good solid drama (The Last Castle (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	The Last Castle (DVD)
Date:	13/01/02 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent performances, well made, good quality

Disadvantages: Unsurprising

Casting is sometimes all you need to get me into a cinema queue - the idea of Robert Redford and James Gandolfini going head to head was quite enough. Redford keeps popping up with solid contributions on either side of the camera every time you think he's retired, while Gandolfini's deserved success in 'The Sopranos' has thankfully not stopped his succession of admirable character performances.

And 'The Last Castle' has some casting aces up its sleeve - Redford is Hollywood's foremost tree-hugger and impeccable liberal, supporting Ralph Nader for the presidency, and yet here he's playing a detatched army general, ending his career in disgrace. Meanwhile Gandolfini, the sardonic heavy par excellence, is cast as an anal-retentive military prison warden, a spineless little man who spends most of the film persecuting Redford because he won't be his friend.

'The Last Castle' is a solid, professional drama. It isn't inspiring or radical in any way, but it does its job with panache. Redford is the general sentenced to an imposing military prison for an initially undisclosed crime; Gandolfini is the boss, ruling the prison with a rod of iron that extends to the occasional murder of a difficult inmate. Hoping to keep his head down, Redford is inexorably drawn into a war of wills with Gandolfini, and after a particularly dodgy incident, Redford realises that he cannot ignore Gandolfini's crimes, and hatches a plan to take over the prison, an event which will effectively end the warden's career.

Some of the film is predictable, but one of the most impressive things about the story is the way it manages to avoid the ritualistic cliches of prison movies - there is no set-piece riot in the canteen, no halfwit with a cutesy pet. Nobody gets a foxy love interest, and perhaps most astonishingly, nobody plans an escape. It was well over halfway through the movie before I realised that nobody was going
to dig a tunnel or knot together some bedsheets.

The film concentrates on the war of nerves, on Redford's belief that leadership is a matter of looking to the best in people and encouraging them, contrasted with Gandolfini's might-is-right semi-fascism. In the end, the moral victories are won long before the film is done, but the astute casting of Redford as a man of genuine principle makes it believable that the prisoners will follow him. In the real world, they're risking their lives on a point of honour, an issue of justice, and they'll probably all suffer once the revolt is done. It's a tribute to a superb cast and the two brilliant leads that this scenario is convincing. Moreover, the film doesn't make empty concessions to action and stunts, and holds back the mayhem until the well-judged finale.

This is a movie calculated to generate Oscar nominations and rave reviews, neither of which are in the end likely to come its way. It's too quiet, too unsensational to get enough attention. But unlike a lot of flabby dramas, it gets the job done, it delivers satisfying, grown-up entertainment, and offers the chance to see good actors (Delroy Lindo and Mark Ruffalo as well as the leads) giving solid performances. It's no 'American Beauty', it won't change your life, but it's a pretty decent night out.

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