Stoic

Starring: Edward Furlong, Shaun Sipos, Sam Levinson, & Steffen Mennekes

Rating: 1 1/2 out of 5 stars

Stoic explores the question of weather or not prison turns minor offenders into hardened criminals, by telling a true story that happened in 2006. The story is most defiantly an eye opener, but the truth is that it doesn't make for a very good movie. Four inmates are trapped in the same cell, twenty-three hours a day. Most of them are in prison for minor offenses, with sentences ranging from six months to six years. As the men play cards, three get suspicious of the fourth, and once they decide he's a cheater, they begin to torture and humiliate the man until the next morning, when one of them winds up dead. Edward Furlong is the only actor of recognition in this film, usually one of my favorite actors, but even he has a hard time making this story work. The truth is that no matter the situation, anytime you place four guys in a room and watch them for an hour and a half, it's bound to get boring. Stoic goes to extreme lengths to be beyond boring, because of it's perfectionist director, Uwe Boll. Boll has a reputation of doing things his own way and being a perfectionist about it. The constant changing of the camera angles as well as the inmates telling their own stories in cutaways, is somewhat clever, but ultimately there really isn't much here to base a film on. Stoic was a good idea, that poses an important question, through a shockingly true story, but it lacks the substances needed to entertain an audience. In other words it was one big bore of a movie that you should absolutely avoid.