Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Parole officer Jack Mabry has only a few weeks left before retirement and wishes to finish out the cases he's been assigned. One such case is that of Gerald 'Stone' Creeson, a convicted arsonist who is up for parole. Jack is initially reluctant to indulge Stone in the coarse banter he wishes to pursue and feels little sympathy for the prisoner's pleads for an early release. Seeing little hope in convincing Jack himself, Stone arranges for his wife to seduce the officer, but motives and intentions steadily blur amidst the passions and buried secrets of the corrupted players in this deadly game of deception.
Stone is carried almost entirely by its performances — De Niro, Norton, and Jovovich all deliver genuinely committed work, with Norton's braided-hair convict being a particularly memorable physical and vocal transformation. The plot framework (seduction-manipulation thriller set around parole hearings) is familiar and the film struggles to fully capitalize on its setup, meandering through a spiritual subplot that feels underdeveloped. Cinematography is competent but unremarkable. The ending is unsatisfying and somewhat anticlimactic given the tension built. Novelty is limited — the morally compromised authority figure vs. manipulative prisoner dynamic covers well-worn ground, and the spiritual awakening thread doesn't distinguish it enough to feel truly singular.