FilmBlather.com

"And now, you have yourself a castle."

Rod Lurie's The Last Castle is an uncommonly riveting motion picture, one that masterfully draws the audience into its characters and its storyline. Not many times this year have I been so rousingly brought to my edge of my seat; rarely do I wonder this actively about what happens next. With this and the remarkably engaging The Contender, Lurie has proved to be adept at making mass-market entertainment out of subject matter one would think would be fodder for the art-house. More power to him.

Indeed, the plot description doesn't make the movie sound particularly enticing, which may be the reason why its box-office reception has been lukewarm at best. A renowned, decorated general, Eugene T. Irwin (Robert Redford), is transferred to the Castle, a maximum security prison for criminally insubordinate soldiers. The judge, jury and executioner at the Castle is Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini; more on him later), who admires Irwin but is offended when the prisoner says that a man who has a collection of war memorabilia like the Colonel's has never stepped foot on a battlefield.

Problems arise more or less immediately. The men in the prison all know and respect the General, and come to him with their grievance: they don't like the way the prison is run. Winter seems to get a sick satisfaction from seeing the men rebuked and punished; he is liberal with the rubber bullets that are used to break up skirmishes in the courtyard. His method of keeping his convicts under control is to strip them of not only their rank, but also their dignity. To him, they are nothing but animals that must be kept from running amok.

Almost unwittingly (or was it all premeditated?), Irwin finds himself an iconic leader of a rebellion. First comes a series of tense, combative face-offs with the proud and determined Winter. His superior, a friend of Irwin's (Delroy Lindo), is called in and says that there is nothing he can do. A concession by Winter himself -- he agrees to allow the prisoners to keep a makeshift chain of command that they've implemented -- only adds to the tension in the air. What follows is all-out war.

Lurie is shockingly good at keeping our eyes glued to the screen. His pacing, plotting and camerawork all serve this purpose without manipulation or shameless pandering. The early scenes have the sort of ominous, foreboding tension that I find to be one of the best tones a movie can muster, and the climactic showdown between Colonel Winter, the safety of his booth above the courtyard literally shattered, and Irwin's men is one of the year's most suspenseful. The Last Castle is a combination of workmanlike efficiency and expert craftsmanship, and it is utterly compelling.

But if there is something the movie is actually going to be remembered for, it will be the performance of James Gandolfini. He is perfect in an extraordinarily difficult role; one of the best things about the film is the ambiguity over who exactly the villain is, and Gandolfini's portrayal is nuanced and complex enough for us to doubt it. Seeing him, we know exactly the kind of person he is because we've seen him before.

I don't know what The Last Castle says about our prison system, our military, or our country if, indeed, it says anything. I do know that it is a wonderful movie experience, one that made me have all of the appropriate emotional reactions at all of the appropriate moments. I also know that its final sequence of shots involving the American flag brought tears to my eyes even if I wasn't exactly sure of the exact message we were supposed to extract from it. This isn't a message movie. In a year when The Mummy Returns and The Fast and the Furious claimed the mass entertainment crown (before Harry Potter, that is), the real popcorn movie has slipped under the radar.