Robert De Niro and Edward Norton have long since established that they are great actors. Unfortunately Stone is a movie which pretty much completely wastes their talents. The plot does not engage, moves too slowly and quickly becomes repetitive. This is a movie which gets stuck in a rut that not even the greatest of actors can pull it out of.De Niro plays Jack, a prison officer who is soon to retire who evaluates prisoners who are up for parole, recommending whether they should be released. Norton plays Stone, a prisoner who will test Jack, tempt him, make him question things about himself. Used as the object of temptation is Stone's wife, Lucetta, who is given a mission to seduce Jack so that he may look upon Stone's case more favorably. Jack's moments with Lucetta add a little something different to a movie which otherwise is just De Niro and Norton sitting on opposite sides of a desk jabbering away at one another. Lots of talk, very little action in this movie.Stone is the convict but Jack clearly has some serious inner demons. There is an anger boiling inside him. If he ever had any faith he seems to have lost it. Stone meanwhile finds some new spirituality. Or maybe that's just a ploy to make him seem a better candidate for release. Jack's wife is deeply religious. Stone's wife most certainly is not. Spirituality hangs over the whole picture. The film appears to be trying to tell us something important. But it never gets the message across. Ultimately it all fizzles out with an ending which is not much of an ending at all, this is a movie with no real resolution to it. It is a movie which never comes together properly. With De Niro and Norton on board, playing off one another throughout, there was great potential. But that potential is wasted. Great actors let down by a lousy script. De Niro seems a little bored at times. Can't blame him really. But by and large he and Norton, as well as Milla Jovovich who plays Lucetta, make the most they can out of the material. The performances are fine. But the material is just not good enough.

This is the typical movie you watch by chance in TV. There are two great actors (not in their best times) and an interesting actress (Jovovich)and you give it a chance.After the introduction the spectator at least thinks that he's going to watch an indie, alternative film full of deepness and complexity.OK, there is none of them. The plot tries to be complex and you spent the whole time waiting for something that doesn't appear. We don't have to mix a strange, non-clear message with a complex one. About the deepness or the finality of the story, the same. A bit of new age, a bit of cheap psychology, a mixture of religious and ethics content, you mix everything and you get a cocktail from which we get this ridiculous movie.I'm sure that there is someone who will defend this movie because of the characters's ambiguity and something like that, but don't be fooled, the characters personality, actually is very bad written.Following with the acting, the overall isn't as bad as other points of the movie but it isn't remarkable. De Niro is such a genius that even doing the minimum effort he success in being enigmatic but, on the other hand, he's very far from him best moment. However, after having such a great career it's forgivable for a near to 70 years old man to be just the shadow of what he was. It's worse if the situation is the same, but being only 40 and doing the same performance again, again and again... but worse than ever. Very bad for you Norton, I think if you keep on like this, you're finished. Milla Jovovich, on the other hand makes a unexpectedly solid interpretation, congrats for her. If you want to watch a solid psychological thriller, this isn't your movie. This is a bad experiment and a big loss of time.

Maybe I "missed the point" or "didn't analyze the character's actions enough" or didn't go out and discuss the movie with friends over cherry pie. I don't know. Here's what I do know - I was looking forward to this film BIG TIME! I'm a fan of the 3 main actors; and considering what Edward Norton pulled off in American History X (the scene where Norton surrenders to the police, and he's all buffed out/shaved head/goatee... and then does that grin/eyebrow lift... scarier than anything "Hannibal Lecter" ever did!), I was more than eager to see him in another prison movie. But a movie about emotions and redemption and whatnot... some movies pull this off beautifully. I just saw an indie flick called "I Melt With You", and I recommend it for any male out there. A synopsis would sound dumb, but any guy who is reaching 40 and realizes his life isn't what he thought it would be when he was 20 will be able to relate to all 4 main characters. But "Stone"... none of what the characters did seemed at all realistic, and their "personality changes" seem based on nothing at all. Like I said in my title, the movie was incredibly boring, and when it was over, all I could think of was, "What was the point of that??"

This is a movie contrived of being all philosophical while trying to bring out human nature but it's a mess and underdeveloped. It's like the director or the writers weren't sure which direction to go. The main reason I decided to check this movie out is because it has Edward Norton playing a convict. But he plays a different type of convict to the one he played in "American History X". He is this kinda whinny and weird character that has a epiphany and tries to show his parole officer played by Robert De Niro that we are the way we are no matter what. While De Niro's character tries to convince himself that he is different by judging others. And the only character that is somewhat likable in this whole movie is Edward Norton's character that goes by the nickname Stone. But even he is underdeveloped and you really can't get a grip on any of the characters or who they are really. Even when the movie is finished, and it's a pretty crap ending by the way. They probably tried to go in a different direction and is indulgent in some areas but it doesn't really work. This movie become tedious and dull pretty early on without having any elements that make it gripping or even interesting. Even Robert De Niro's character is dull even though in the beginning his character seemed to have potential to stand out or at least be interesting. It's not a awful movie but by the end of it all I didn't feel like I gained much from this flick at all. Also the way Edward Norton's character Stone talks made me want to cough since he seemed to have a strep throat.5.1/10