OK, haters: Here’s the movie meant to silence your complaints about Kristen Stewart’s acting range. And it might, if you can sit through all of it.
Stewart seems out to prove her potential with this solemn drama. For the most part, she succeeds. She’s appropriately vulnerable and touchingly determined as Private Cole, a young soldier who’s been assigned to patrol Guantanamo Bay.
Cole begins by absorbing patriotic slogans and orders to keep her mouth shut, just as she’s supposed to. But her situation proves messier than the rigid confines of the military allow. Her superiors alternately harass and dismiss her. More troubling, there’s the tentative friendship she develops with Ali (Payman Maadi, very good), a detainee who insists on his innocence. He doesn’t seem to be the monster she expects.
First-time director Peter Sattler gives his two lead actors strong support, allowing them to play off each other in intriguing ways. But his screenplay is poorly paced and rather broadly drawn, leaving little room to hide the plot’s clunkier or more implausible moments.
Still, it’s smart for Stewart to be taking smaller, challenging roles like this. A few more steps forward, and she’ll fully break free from the limiting restraints of her “Twilight” years.
