The idea of Bobby DeNiro and Edward Norton sharing screen time is enough to draw viewers to Stone, but it isn’t enough to keep them. The DeNiro trademarks (mugging for the camera, commanding tones, chiseled expression) and Norton acrobatics required to make the film watchable are many and employed liberally throughout, but two hours of suffering and redemption are essentially whittled down into Milla Jovovich’s two perfectly erect nipples. Indeed, this film is more about appearance than substance.
Stone centers on the verbal jousting of DeNiro’s Jack Mabry, a retiring parole officer, and Norton’s Gerald “Stone” Creeson, a convicted arsonist. Unfortunately, the result is decidedly mixed. Norton, strapped with a thick backwoods accent and white-boy cornrows, is convincing as a scheming prisoner willing to use any means to begin anew outside of his prison cell. He employs his sexed-up wife, Lucetta (Jovovich), to seduce Jack, a good choice as Jovovich delights as the movie’s true hustler. But the issue lies not with the young couple; it’s with DeNiro’s flat performance as the emotionally detached Jack. There is absolutely no spark between him and Stone during their frequent back and forths, and any desire he holds for Lucetta is only implied with a reluctant smile.
Equally chilly is the chemistry between DeNiro and France Conroy, who portrays Jack’s wife, Madylyn. The icy relationship of the loveless couple creeps its way into their acting, with neither of them creating the tension necessary to blow up their relationship. In fact, the film’s first scene finds a young Madylyn confronting the indifferent Jack with the promise of leaving him; Jack, in a fit of hysteria, rushes upstairs to dangle their young daughter from the bedroom window with the threat of dropping her if Madylyn leaves; Madylyn acquiesces, and the pair descends into a soulless existence, end of story.
Even more disappointing: what’s really at the center of Stone is debt and redemption, but writer Angus MacLaughlin and director John Curran never actually confront these issues head-on. The film, then, becomes a sequence of missed opportunities, never fulfilling its intentions and always falling into the title’s connotations: stiff, bland, and unexciting.
