Given the events of recent weeks, viewers could take the patriotic and heartbreaking heroism director Rod Lurie injects into The Last Castle as a reinforcement of the dedication and honor that comes with being an American and, specifically, an American soldier. But now that the world has seen what true American heroes and leaders are all about, The Last Castle comes off like some sort of tired clich‚ that takes itself too seriously by co-opting a popular idea and its symbols--in this case, the American flag.
The film is centered around the struggle between Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini), the dictator-like warden of a maximum-security military prison, and legendary three-star General Irwin (Robert Redford), the newest inmate whose reputation as a military hero overshadows the fact that he has been court-martialed. Irwin's guidance and courage gives the other inmates someone to look up to and (get ready for a shocker here) enables all of them to abandon their prisoner mentalities and miraculously discover that they are still flag-saluting, honorable soldiers.
Forget that the screenplay is awful, that Gandolfini and Redford have been terribly miscast, and that every significant moment in the film can be predicted 10 minutes before it happens. The main reason The Last Castle is not very good is that Lurie never explains to the audience why these one-dimensional characters think and act the way they do. That makes the film's premise all the more perplexing and the climactic final battle about as dramatic and exciting as a neighborhood game of Capture the Flag.
