Echoes of "Cape Fear" reverberate across a withering suspense thriller that pales in comparison. "Stone" comes off as an open-handed cinematic insult. That Robert De Niro, who starred in Martin Scorsese's version of "Cape Fear," should endorse such a cheap knock-off is mildly upsetting at best. Jack (Robert De Niro) is a retiring prisoner evaluations officer. At home with his aging wife, Jack is a quiet family man.
Jack thinks he's seen it all until he's approached by the sex-crazed girlfriend (Mila Jovovich) of a parole-eligible prisoner named Stone (Ed Norton). Stone is supposed to represent a sleazy low-down excuse for a man, who happens to be smarter than everyone else around. For the convicted arsonist Ed Norton takes on a hodgepodge of his past caricature creations, using a Southern drawl mixed with ghetto slang, to mark his territory.
When you think of how unbelievably scary De Niro's oily ex-con was in "Cape Fear," Norton's thinly-written character-of-would-be-parallel-menace never stands a chance. Still, the actors aren't entirely to blame.
Screenwriter Angus MacLachlan serves up a sophomore feature that falls into the pejorative stereotype of most under-polished second films. The genre jump, from dramatic chamber-piece ("Junebug") to gothic suspense thriller, is a river too wide for MacLachlan to cross. The writer never establishes the complex levels of spatial and thematic logic necessary to motivate his incomplete narrative.
Rated R. 88 mins.
