"Stone" Movie Review/Thoughts

Typically, seeing a shot like this where a white guy is going to play a white man wanting to be a black man, I generally don't care to see the movie. But when I had read that movie was a "subtle cat and mouse mind game", I decided I'd give it try since I do like Edward Norton and I've wondered where he's been lately. But one thing I've come to learn from how companies advertise their films is that they are increasingly getting bad when it comes to accurately saying what the movie is about. A description that would attract and audience has become more important than what its actually about because once you've paid for the movie, that's all that matters. But this one, however, was actually, pretty smart and pretty good.

So the movie is about Jack (Deniro), a parole officer who, of course, is nearing retirement and wants to finish his last case before handing over the reins to a new younger woman. Jack's last case is Stone (Edward Norton), a man sentenced to jail for being an accomplice to the robbery, murder, and arson of his grandparents and their home. From the very beginning, you get the sense Stone is, well, a moron. He speaks openly about missing his wife, Lucetta (Jovovich), and their sex etc. And Jack, who consistently plays it by the books, is not interested. However, as things progress, we get to see more of Jack's actual character and we grow to learn, that perhaps, Stone isn't as stupid as he first appears. Soon after the parole interviewing begins, Jack begins to get calls at his home from Lucetta, who wants to do anything...anything to help her husband get a favorable review. But this is where the ambiguity begins to come into play. We know that Stone and Lucetta have discussed the idea of her approaching Jack outside of work, but how much does Stone know about her means of persuasion?

(Spoilers)

But this is where the film really seems to deviate from a typical course. The beginning scene of the movie shows Jack and his wife, Madeleine (I think thats her name) when they're young. One distinctly gets the impression from the first minute, as Mad hands Jack a glass of whiskey and Jack receives it as if she's not there, that Jack perhaps isn't as good as he thinks. After this moment, Mad declares to Jack that she's leaving him because he keeps her "soul in a dungeon". Jack then runs upstairs to where their daughter sleeps and threatens to throw her out the window if Mad were to leave him. During this scene, a wasp is showin trying to get in the window. After Mad sees what he will do, she declares she will stay with him, and when she says this, Jack, realizing what he's doing, snaps out of it and cries and hugs her, apologizing. The wasp gets caught under the windowsill as Mad shuts the window back. 

Throughout the movie, you see Jack's anger violently burst from time to time as he yells at secretaries and curses Stone's seemingly obtuse ramblings about life and religion as he has begun reading one of those brochures for a religion no one has ever heard of. Jack's violent outbursts play into his sexuality also as Lucetta becomes more and more aggressive in her pleading to speak with him, which he denies at first, but taken by her beauty, eventually gives in.

And this continues for a good part of the movie, making you question if Stone is actually a bad person or if Jack is. And just when you think you have the film figured out, as Stone is going to be released due to his wife's persuasive tactics, Stone throws out a few lines to Jack as he's leaving prison that totally changes this. He even discourses on watching the fire that burns his grandparents' bodies and home on the way that a fire is "alive" and how it cleanses things, sets things back to zero. The night after he is released, Jack and Madeleine's house also catches fire, though they escape to safety. And while Jack seems to distinctly believe this is Stone's work, you see his wife act coolly about the situation, coming up with ways to tell the fire department how it happened, mentioning some frayed wires in the basement. Its also worthy to note that earlier that day, you see Madeleine coming up the stairs from the basement with a strange look on her face. So you are then forced to looked at Stone and Madeleine in a point of view that parallels their characters; as two people trapped, one in prison, and one in a loveless marriage. Does the fire cleanse things for Madeleine and Jack? And how much of this did Stone control? The ambiguity of the movie's eponymous character makes the movie interesting. And of course, the film closes with the sound of a wasp droning in Jack's office as he packs his things. 

The Reason "The Fighter" Is Called "The Fighter"

Boxing films have generally always been about the boxer alone.

Many have said that boxing's greatest value, that which arguably stands it apart from so many other sports, is that reliance on the individual solely. This has always been the case with boxing, and to an extent, this is usually the case with boxing movies. "Cinderella Man", "Raging Bull", etc, are about the boxer, the individual. There are other important characters in these movies that play in the boxer's life, but at the end of the day, it all rests on the boxer. So when "The Fighter" first came out, I was generally disappointed to see the reviews, especially by Ebert (God, when it comes to film critics), that it was a consensus that Mark Wahlberg's Mickey Ward is written as a quiet, perhaps uncomplicated man. And the opening line of Ebert's review is that Wahlberg's character "has less personality than the hero of any other boxing movie I can remember". Yet, after watching the movie, finally, I feel that this focus on the boxer alone is a misconception for the overall story. 

A Boxer's corner is also important.

After Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won their respective and well deserved Oscars for their performances in "The Fighter", I began to get a bit angry as the previews for the film began to focus more on Bale than on Wahlberg. Obviously this is a clever marketing technique, but I think by doing so, the newer previews post-Academy Awards help the movie in exhibiting what it is actually about. The meatiest parts of the movie, involve Mickey Ward's dysfunctional family and whether or not they are a benefactor or a hindrance to his career. At the beginning of the movie, Christian Bale's Dickiey Eklund is the star of the film. Although a crack addict, he's charismatic (something I've always thought Bale lacked in most of his movies) and hogs his brother's spotlight, despite being a not so young boxer on a rather long losing streak. His mother, too, soaks up all the camera time she can and obviously gives Dickie more attention than Mickey, despite Dickie's drug problems and the fact that he once fought Sugar Ray Leonard and wasn't knocked out. But this focus on family and who is in Mickey's corner throughout the movie (Dickie Eklund was in Mickey's corner up until his retirement) is what the movie is actually about, not just the boxer. For a boxer's corner, and the people in his life, play a lot into how mentally ready he is for the sweet science. A good case of this was I once had a friend of mine tell of how, while watching a fight between two rookies, one particular fighter would probably end up being pretty good because of the manager he had in his corner. While boxing is a one on one sport, lets not forget the role the corner plays in the boxer's career. 

And while this is not a great film, I think this is a good one with a different take on the boxing movie formula. It does play a bit into the typical sports story of redemption, but everyone loves a good story of redemption, and this one is a fairly powerful one. Despite all of its dysfunctions, when a family comes together, everyone benefits. Throughout the first half of the movie, I thought titling the film "The Fighter" was a bad call. But now, I understand the reason it doesn't have Mickey Ward's name in the title. It's not all about him. And everyone in this movie has to fight to get things done.