The Last Castle Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

The Last Castle

I don't really understand The Last Castle. (Hey, even a film critic can be honest.) Somehow, it's supposed to plug into the post-9/11 wave of patriotism and flag waving, and it seems to do that so well that I wonder how it came to be made pre-9/11. In all honesty, there is just not that much here. I've never really been that charmed or fascinated by prison movies, although I can understand how the extremes of the situation set up some great possibilities for makers of films. Hey, all these guys crammed into a tight space: riot! And, how many prison riots do we really need to see?

Well, the star power and powerful performances of James Gandolfini as Col. Winter and Robert Redford as Irwin give us an incentive to sit through this mess, but there just isn't that much new territory here. Change "The Castle," the military prison of the title, under Col. Winter's rule, to a civilian prison, and we've seen it all before: the good guys (the prison administrators) are the bad guys and the criminals are the ones we root for. Well, that goes back at least as far as John Milton's Paradise Lost, and no one has improved on it since then.

Fights in the mess hall? Been there, ducked that. (Hey, I taught high school for twenty years, so some prison movie scenes for me are déjà vu all over again.) Secret meetings, impulsive betting, solidarity among the rainbow quilt of criminals of all kinds of ethnicities. (Note, of course, that true leadership is with the very white boy Redford, against the somewhat darker Gandolfini.)

The script doesn't help matters. Speaking of Milton, his iambic pentameter would flow off criminal tongues more realistically than some of the lines in this film.

Redford just doesn't come across convincingly as a military hero. Robert Redford is stuck in his golden-boy days and can't break out of them the way Sean Connery and others have. Face it (as he should), he's not a kid anymore. Neither is the character he is playing. A quarter of a century ago, Robert Redford might have been able to lead an army of young women, but at least today, he just doesn't have the charisma to lead anyone.

Then, there is the September factor. There's a lot of hoopla about the flag here--it almost becomes a character (acted with more conviction than Redford brings to the film)--but I don't see how this film will satisfy or even appeal to the audience who is looking for a rousing patriotic celebration. This is rather dark for such purposes: an American-as-apple-pie prison flick? I don't think so. Keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your self out of the trouble that would lead you to a place like this. I'm not talking about the Castle, the prison, but about any theater where The Last Castle is being screened.