“But None of Them Satisfying”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Stone - Movie PosterSTONE is the latest movie starring Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, and then when you add Milla Jovovich to that couple of actor’s actors, then you have got yourself a movie, right?

Well,not so fast.

Next you need a believable story, a good script, and a satisfying ending, and this one fails on all three counts.

The movie begins with a dramatic opening scene in the past that will have repercussions many years later in the future.

Then we cut to a present-day funeral for a character named Robert Mabry, and his brother Jack says in his eulogy, “If it wasn’t for Bobby, I don’t know where I would have wound up.”

Jack is a parole officer who works in a prison, he is close to retirement, and he wants to keep his current cases to see them through to their reviews.

One of his cases is Gerald Creeson, who says that his people know him as “Stone,” and he prefers to be called “Stone.”

Stone tells Jack that he just wants to talk to him, and then maybe they can both get what they want. Stone says that he is so ready to be out of prison and what can he and Jack do to make that happen.

Stone has been married for nine years to Lucetta, he calls her a “dime,” a perfect “10,” and he says that she is an alien from another world. He asks Jack how long he has been married, and Jack tells him 43 years.

Stone was convicted of burning down his grandparents’ house, and he claims that his cousin killed his grandparents first, which Stone didn’t even know until after his cousin came outside and told him.

As you can tell, Stone talks a good story.

Then Lucetta, who is a grade-school teacher, starts calling Jack at home, wanting to meet him so that she can plead Stone’s case, all of which is against the rules.

But not against the rules of a movie story, right?

Eventually, Jack and Lucetta do meet, at first openly and then surreptitiously.

Unfortunately, this movie is constructed so that it contains what could have been any number of different endings, and any one of them would have been just as valid.

STONE, therefore, has many endings, but none of them is satisfying.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”