'CASTLE' KEEPS ITS POLITICS SIMPLE, CONFUSED.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

With its emphasis on soldierly pride, strategic posturing and flying the flag, ``The Last Castle'' should be the perfect movie for our extraordinary times. But it's not. ``Castle'' does a difficult double belly flop as it manages to be howlingly simplistic and ridiculously illogical at the same time.

Director Rod Lurie, who's become the go-to guy for politically confused movies (``The Contender,'' ``Deterrence''), does something resembling an impressive job of manipulating viewer sympathies, considering the fact David Scarpa and Graham Yost's script offers nothing in the way of actual heroes and a version of villainy that, when self-described as efficiently doing one's duty, does sound a lot like an ugly but necessary job well done.

Then again, while it's some kind of achievement, asking us to cheer for a bunch of felons led by what a more honest script would clearly identify as a megalomaniac, may not be something to take a lot of pride in.

Essentially a military ``Cool Hand Luke'' bizarrely merged with strains of ``Amadeus,'' ``Castle'' stars Robert Redford as disgraced three-star Gen. Irwin and James Gandolfini as sadistic warden Col. Winter.

An admired combat theorist, Vietnam POW and veteran of numerous conflicts, Irwin lost eight men under his command during an African police action. He did not contest the court martial for disobeying executive orders. Irwin himself never questions his guilt, and we're informed of no extenuating circumstances that could lend the least hint of mitigating nobility to his disastrous insubordination.

But, you see, he's the good guy. Col. Winter must be despicable because he's an aesthete who listens to Salieri CDs and fusses over his collection of war memorabilia - something the idolized Irwin disdains on their first encounter as a hobby no one who's ever experienced the terrors of combat would indulge.

Those of our fathers who prized their captured Japanese swords and such may take issue with that. But as we, along with Irwin, experience the cruel and brutal ways Winter maintains order in the titular prison, it becomes obvious the warden is not a nice guy. But neither are the inmates, who range from drug-runners (``You Can Count on Me's'' Mark Ruffalo, as the cynical son of one of Irwin's war prisoner comrades) to a guy who took a claw hammer to his c.o.'s head (Clifton Collins Jr.).

Yet we're expected to believe that all the inmates really need to turn them into decent citizens is a little self-respect and caring leadership. Irwin is all too willing to provide this as he plots an impossibly elaborate uprising that will get Winters replaced.

Obviously, deep notions of military pride inform the film's proceedings. Lurie is a West Point graduate and army veteran and writer Scarpa was, for at least some of his childhood, a service brat. But while they obviously know more about how soldiers think than civilians could, it's conveyed in such an abstract, posturing way here that it often seems absurd. At one point, one of the prisoners asks Irwin what another inmate had to die for, and I was scratching my head along with him. The film's conflict boils down to little more than a measurement contest between the general and the colonel, and it's difficult to believe that anyone else really has any stake in it.

Whatever its flaws, ``Last Castle'' stages a nice acting contest between its leads. Both Redford and Gandolfini underplay for the most part. The older actor employs his facial creases and blotches like never before to signal Irwin's experienced formidability. The heftier one marvelously uses carriage and even the drape of his various uniforms to evoke his cunning, self-delusion and imperfectly camouflaged shortcomings.

Lurie continues to prove himself an astute judge of performances. His interest in politically gnarly subject matter, especially in upended times like these, is commendable, too. But he really needs to work out the complicated meanings of his films to a more intelligent degree or risk having them all turn out, as ``Last Castle'' has, meaning absolutely nothing.

``THE LAST CASTLE''

(Rated R: violence, language)

The stars: Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Clifton Collins Jr., Delroy Lindo.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Rod Lurie. Written by David Scarpa and Graham Yost. Produced by Robert Lawrence. Released by DreamWorks Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, 11 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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Photo:

Warden James Gandolfini, left, tries to intimidate prisoner Robert Redford, right, in ``The Last Castle.''