I don’t know what the requirements for a parole officer are, but you sure don’t need them to work at this prison. The Last Castle is the story of a three star general (Robert Redford) who ignores “credible intelligence”, and gets eight men killed on what was supposed to be his last mission. He pleads guilty and is sentenced to 10 years in Military prison, from which point the series of events get increasingly more unfortunate. This particularity castle-esque prison is ran by the effeminate warden, or the “king” of the prison ( James Gandolfini). He has a beautiful male assistant (Steve Burton) who apparently looks so good with frosted tips that the Army has made a special exception to let him keep his perfect hair intact, besides, Gandofini seems to enjoy the young man bringing him various fancy cheeses to eat while he listens to Mozart . After the first and predictably tense meeting between Gandolfini and Redford, in which Redford basically calls Gandolfini a big ole sissy pants, the battle over a prison is on for some reason.
Redford begrudgingly befriends an ex-Army doctor, who tells of the substandard medical care that they receive in the prison. The usefulness of his medical training peaks at this point in the film, where he proceeds to give aspirin to a man that was nearly beaten to death. Not because he’s a bad doctor, but because that’s “all he could smuggle”. The inmates take turns voicing their challenges to Redford, including a doctor whose only available treatment plan is to tell them how boned they are, cruel and unusual punishment, and a list of “accidental deaths” that turns out are not so accidental.
After some long speeches to lonely horn solos about how he’s only there to mind his own business, it becomes fairly obvious that Redford can barely even help what a great general he is, and men tend to follow him even when he is doing nothing. The final straw for our reluctant hero is when Gandolfini has the simple stuttering marine who “broke out of his shell” with Redford’s guidance shot in the head by a rubber bullet, killing him as an example to the whole prison.
This causes the prisoners to enact a mostly unseen plan that includes building a fully functional trebuchet complete with incendiary bombs that they erect in the center of the prison yard, and defend it from hundreds of armed guards with lunch tray shields before they take over a helicopter with a water cannon and crash it into the guard tower.
Then Redford disarms hundreds of sharpshooters with his sheer awesomeness.
Gandolfini is a little tense at this point, having lost all control of everything. Even his frosted boy slave betrays him. In a moment of rage he guns down Redford, unloading an entire clip into his chest. The doctor rushes forward to let Redford know he’s probably not going to make it. So before he dies, he runs the American flag up the flag pole.
Should you see this movie?
It’s not bad if you can stand movies that are completely ridiculous, but take themselves WAY to seriously. James Gandolfini is fantastic in this role, and is the standout performance for me. He alone almost makes it worth watching the movie. Add in his hot man-assistant and a super-jacked and shirtless Robert Redford and it’s a BE SURE TO RENT from me.
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