Not a big fan of the military in general, nor military life, I have chosen to watch this movie (and respectively to review it) because of James Gandolfini. I have been pleased by the “Art of War” played in The Castle, it was quite entertaining. You know that I don’t like to reveal the subject in any review I do, but here, everything is predictable, and I liked the play a lot. The castle itself is a little bit supra realistic and slightly steampunk-ish, but they needed a nice locale, interestingly provided tax-free, by the State of Tennessee. “The Castle” used to be a real prison, the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville, and it is over one hundred years old. It is the same prison from The Green Mile or an obscure Sharon Stone movie, called The Last Dance, but the relevance consisted in the former prison’s outside looking. A big bunch of technicians worked hard to adapt the castle to this particular movie.
The Last Castle – James Gandolfini, Robert Redford
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Because James Gandolfini played in The Sopranos in the same time, his role as Col. Winter was something different, he acted as a more disciplined and bossy to the rules character. As the prison warden, he had all the buttons. He was the “little” god of the castle, sometimes sadistic, sometimes even pathetic. I have understood that “the castle” was a disciplinary prison. As they presented it, it wasn’t worst than the one in Prison Break, on the contrary, it seemed quite humane. Everything went wrong when a “famous” decorated General who recently committed a tactical mistake, is brought there, to finish his punishment. Gen. Irwin, played by Robert Redford, is a living Sun Tzu, meaning he is a living legend. Very conscious of his charisma, he can’t stop himself of being arrogant with the warden, as it was his fault Winter never was in combat before.
The Last Castle – Poster
The guy was courteous and invited the big general in his office. Being in the same time a great admirer of the tactician Irwin (punished now exactly for a wrong tactical move in which ten people died), he was gratuitously offended by the general who expressed his contempt for people collecting war artifacts, when he went to his library to bring a book authored by Irwin, to be autographed.
What more can I say, from now on, the movie became a movie, a dream factory, out of any realistic content, which wasn’t bad at all. It has been made to look as a “combat” between the mighty Redford and the lowlife Soprano. “A la guerre comme à la guerre”, as the proverb says, the ends justify the means, so it was wrong for the general to be imprisoned in the first place.
A 2001 release, with Robert Redford as Lieutenant General Eugene Irwin, James Gandolfini as Colonel Winter, Mark Ruffalo as Yates, Delroy Lindo as Brigadier General Wheeler, Steve Burton as Captain Peretz, Paul Calderón as Sergeant Major Dellwo, Clifton Collins, Jr. as Corporal Aguilar, Robin Wright as Rosalie Irwin, the general’s daughter. Lindo and Wright had something a little bit more than cameos. It was directed by Rod Lurie and written by David Scarpa.
Here you have the Paramount Pictures movie trailer, heavily made to look something that the movie is not, and with less spoilers than usual.
As a 6.9 imdb rate out of ten, it is definitively an interesting movie. If it captured my attention, it may capture yours, too. My rate for the record, and I hope to not forget to do this from now on.
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