Decorated and respected General Eugene Irwin (Robert Redford) finds himself court-marshalled after disobeying orders and ends up being sent to a military prison. When he arrives there, he is stripped of his rank and now finds himself having to answer to Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini) who uses somewhat questionable methods in order to run his prison. Irwin is not happy with the way Winter runs things at the prison and with the help of his inmates he makes a play to overthrow Winter and his brutal regime...On the whole, I enjoyed The Last Castle although it's fair to say that this is not the most briskly paced of films; the first half of the picture is painfully slow and repetitive and it does seem to take an awful long time to make its point. This inevitably takes away some of the enjoyment from the picture and makes the film feel a little uneven.However, once Irwin starts to rally the inmates then things do pick up and the film does become a lot more energetic. The section where the inmates overthrow Winter is entertaining and quite imaginative - although there are some section of this that seem a bit unrealistic (such as how the inmates manage to create/devise/build their various weaponry and devices without any of the guards noticing at any point?The acting from the big name actors is fairly good; Redford is a good presence and gives a cool and rather low-key understated performance. Gandolfini also does a decent enough job even if he feels like more of a caricature than a real person. Ruffalo is good in support and his character is of some interest, but little is really done with him - this extends to several other characters who are mostly thinly drawn. The only other person of interest to me was Steve Burton who could be a professional Sean Kanan lookalike (I actually thought he was Sean Kanan until I saw the credits rolling at the end). The plot thickens though as it turns out that Steve Burton is related to Sean Kanan by marriage - scary!!!If you can make it past a fairly slow paced first hour then this film more than compensates your patience by a much more enjoyable second hour. I do feel that this film would have benefitted from more editing and the way I see it is that The Last Castle would have made for an excellent 90 minute film, but at 130 minutes it's too long and as a result of this it is merely a good film.

This is one of the most powerful movies I've seen. The only movie which get my eyes water, the way when Eugine Erwin dies it's something like the ending scene of T2 when the T800 goes to the liquid metal, no Titanic, no Godfather, no Schindler's List, but this movie. People don't like it because its fiction, of course its fiction, Batman is fiction too, but its art. The acting is great - the general's character is simply awesome and the villain - one of the best of all time in an action movie, the plot is awesome, the music throughout the movie is simply penetrating and the twists in the plot are great too. But the most thrilling thing is the powerful moving throughout the movie. And the ending is just perfect. You expect the flag to go upside down but no it goes up right to show that this is the castle. This movie I can watch countless number of times.Simply awesome: 10/10

Being a Robert Redford Movie, one would expect a great, above average movie with sophisticated dialogue.The movie started half descent, but the characters were flawed, cliché and had no depth. We have a five star General with superior intelligence decides to build a Castle with the prison (Also named Castle), A bit childish and very cliché in my opinion.Then you also have the "Forest Grunt" Marine, stuttering and all, a character that was unnecessary and just plain dumb.The movie could have been great had the dialogue and some of the details been better developed. Overall, the movie was decent enough to watch and entertaining. "A rental in essence", but not a Grade A movie as one would expect from Robert Redford.In the end, this movie was disappointing and left you feeling with a bit unintelligent. A movie to watch when there's nothing else to watch.I give it 5.5 / 10.

The Last Castle is an army feel good movie set in an prison.The good. Well planned out tactics. Solid action. A bit of suspense and intrigue. Nice acting. Well paced scenario.The actors. Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, and Delroy Lindo give us a credible performance. Their lack of brilliance is not a reflection of their capabilities, but rather what they were given to work with.The bad. Too much army heroic mentality. Not every soldier is like that.The ugly. Single minded characters, lack of normal complexity.The result. A satisfying testosterone flick. Do not expect more.