Jack Mabry is so close to retirement and his final parole case with Gerald Creeson or Stone a convicted arsonist would certainly be a tough one for him to deal with. Especially when Lucetta gets involved.
⭐️⭐️
The film opened with a scene showing Jack and his wife Madylyn who had announced she was going to leave him, on hearing this news he holds their daughter out the window threatening to drop her if she goes through with leaving him. Then we are brought to years later and she is still with him and when he continues with his work wanting to keep all of his current inmates before retirement to finish the cases he is given a new case that of Gerald Creeson who insists on being called Stone.
Stone wants to be released early and looks to use his wife to convince Jack to sort this for him. He apparently changes and finds a God something Jack does not believe during their meetings, after all that is certainly something that nearly all prisoners claim in order to be given early parole.
This really is not a good film and the relationship for sex between Lucetta and Jack is just ridiculous. Like it made no sense at all and that certainly pushed me over the edge in not caring for the film at all. None of the characters had anything likeable about them and we certainly could not believe that Stone had changed his character so quickly and abruptly. Lucetta is a horrendous character who is seen having sex with another man as well, in a rather graphic scene that I guess was just to show that she wasn't really missing her husband that much. Throw in the inappropriate touching during a prison visit which I am sure you would never be able to get away with and you really do have a terrible film.
So why did I give it two stars? Well considering the awful characters and storyline both Robert De Niro and Edward Norton put in good performances as two men who actually aren't really that different to one another. The scenes between the pair were the only thing that was worth watching in the film to be totally brutal. Milla Jovovich was terrible, seriously the lines and the character she took on really was so badly written and put across very cringe worthy!
Before deciding to watch this film I hadn't even heard of it before and I probably know the reason behind that now.