Stone (2010)
Directed by John Curran
Parole officer Jack Mabry has only a few weeks left before retirement and wishes to finish out the cases he's been assigned. One such case is that of Gerald 'Stone' Creeson, a convicted arsonist who is up for parole. Jack is initially reluctant to indulge Stone in the coarse banter he wishes to pursue and feels little sympathy for the prisoner's pleads for an early release. Seeing little hope in convincing Jack himself, Stone arranges for his wife to seduce the officer, but motives and intentions steadily blur amidst the passions and buried secrets of the corrupted players in this deadly game of deception.
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What critics compared Stone to
It's yet another of the dual type roles Norton's beginning to specialize in, from the one that broke him out in "Primal Fear" to the more literal double role he takes on in "Leaves of Grass."
Edward Norton shined in début dual-personality as his Primal Fear altar boy conned egocentric lawyer Richard Gere, and he reprises the put-on practice now on corrections parole officer Robert De Niro.
Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton, splitting the difference of his “Primal Fear” personas) pleads that he’s been rehabilitated to his parole officer Jack (Robert De Niro), who can’t tell whether or not Stone is playing him.
De Niro looks pained to be here, and Norton performed this jittery liar routine so indelibly in Primal Fear that nothing his character does is surprising.
This prolonged battle of wits between the titular character (Edward Norton), an arsonist who is up for release after serving time for a horrific crime, and Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro), the parole officer who will decide the prisoner's fate, is a lot more ambitious than the crafty-felon thriller Primal Fear, the movie that made Norton an instant star.
Norton’s turn as the titular prison conman Gerald “Stone” Creeson is equally fraught with memories, right back to his 1996 breakout role as the deceptively meek altar boy of Primal Fear.
(It's reminiscent of a similar scene in Terrence Malick's Badlands.)