Last Castle, The

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

It's an even rarer pleasure to see a film that combines exciting action with a smart, well-informed script and vivid yet restrained performances.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It could have been more, could have been a triumph and a classic, instead of simply an effective entertainment.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The kind of movie you can enjoy easily enough, as long as you don't think about it much.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Not as simple as it looks, though its appeal is simple: Robert Redford goes to prison, and James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos") is the warden. That's a movie worth seeing right there.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Like Lurie's previous two films, it's also simplistic and somewhat muddled.

Chicago Reader J. R. Jones

Engrossing if standard-issue prison drama.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Lurie manages, despite these obstacles, to inspire Redford to give one of the most layered and interesting performances of his career.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

If this melodrama has that haven't-we-met-before look, it's because it combines elements of "The Caine Mutiny" (Gandolfini's Winter is Queeg-like) with those of "Stalag 17."

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

An outrageously unlikely prison action movie made with lots of eye-catching pizzazz and undeserved expertise.

Mr. Showbiz Cody Clark

It's good enough, smart enough, and people will like it. It's also a high-concept cop-out, a convention-strangled genre movie that never zigs when your every instinct is screaming that it's about to zag.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A disappointingly pedestrian prison meller that falls between stools artistically and politically.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

This is, after all, not just Robert Redford. It's Redford in the nobly burnished self-mythologic perfection of his late-middle-aged golden god-ness.

USA Today Claudia Puig

They may call it The Last Castle, but moviegoers will ultimately feel rooked.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie is exuberant, strapping and obvious -- a problem drama suffering from a steroid overdose.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Often feels choppy, as if chunks of connecting narrative had been lopped off in the editing room.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

While the film is shot in shades of gray, the drama is played out in black and white.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

All crass in its empty bluster and bogus uplift.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Ruffalo, actually, who was so perfect in the little-seen "You Can Count On Me," is the only real reason to sit through The Last Castle.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

This is an odd and ultimately dispiriting film, despite some intriguing ideas about brute force vs. moral authority, the elaborately staged uprising -- and impressive actors in the cast. That is to say, they've been impressive elsewhere.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's not objectionable (which is saying something these days) but neither does it have any compelling reason to be seen.

The New Yorker David Denby

(Lurie's) a shameless, if skilled, manipulator of easy emotions. (29 Oct 2001, p. 93)

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Although the movie has a few interesting twists and turns, its mind-versus-mind conceit devolves into a mundane warden-versus-inmate conclusion.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's a mishmash of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "From Here to Eternity" and "The Great Escape," with everything complex and entertaining siphoned off.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

I don't know why Redford and the white-hot Gandolfini signed on for this fiasco, but the give-and-take between them is the film's sole pleasure.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Miscast, clumsily staged and ideologically wobbly.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Deadly dull.

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

Lurie's politics aside, it's astonishing that a man who once reviewed films keeps churning out movies full of cinema's most hollow clichés; indeed, he turns out stuff that's even more disjointed and improbable than the most mediocre fare.

Slate David Edelstein

A melodrama in which the clichés prove more lethal than the bullets.

Time Richard Schickel

Redford underacts, Gandolfini overacts, and this movie is directed with the same air of unreality, the same grim passion for cliches, both cinematic and emotional, that Lurie brought to his first film, "The Contender."

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Bizarre, confused, sanctimonious manure that makes Lurie's own "The Contender" look responsible by comparison.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Plays out like "Cool Hand Luke" meets "Attica," and it's quite the silliest thing.