Grade: B+

Verdict: This stand-up-and-cheer picture is the right movie at the right time in the right place.

Details: Starring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. Directed by Rod Lurie. Rated R for language and violence. Two hours, 12 minutes.

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Review: This big patriotic blast of a picture might not have done as well if it had been released this time last year. But now flag-waving is unquestionably in fashion, and “The Last Castle” — a rousing, old-fashioned action film — offers just the kind of good-guys-win catharsis that moviegoers are seeking. It also offers the kind of Robert Redford we've been missing for the past few years.

The movie takes place in a maximum-security military prison known as the Castle. In a voice-over introduction, Redford explains that for a thousand years, four things have been needed to take a castle: location, protection, a garrison and a flag. This castle, however, is built to keep people in, not keep people out.

Redford plays Irwin, a three-star general so legendary that the prison's commander, Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini), can't wait to meet him. When he hears that Irwin is being sent to the facility (for disobeying a presidential order), he mutters to an aide, “They should be naming a base after the man, not sending him here.”

Winter's hero worship turns sour when he overhears Irwin dismissing his prized collection of military memorabilia. “Anyone who had a collection like this has never been in battle,” the general says.

Reacting like a spurned lover, Winter quickly reveals his toxic nature. He's not the calm,measured man he likes to present, but an insecure martinet — a petty sadist who likes to throw only one basketball into the prison yard so he can watch the inmates try to kill each other over it.

Initially, this makes no difference to Irwin. Despite a steady stream of prisoners begging him to do something about Winter, he insists, “Gentlemen, I'm done. I'm finished. I'm not fighting anyone or anything again.”

As you probably guessed, he changes his mind and rallies the prisoners. Otherwise, there'd be no movie.

“The Last Castle” picks through a panoply of anti-authority movies, from “Cool Hand Luke” to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” At the same time, it belongs to that more particularized genre: the anti-military-authority movie, where you find pictures like “Mister Roberts” and “The Caine Mutiny.”

Gandolfini plays Winter as a paranoid mix of Captain Bligh, Captain Queeg and Big Nurse of “Cuckoo's Nest.” Totally gone are the power and charisma of his Tony Soprano character (of HBO's “The Sopranos”). Gandolfino burrows into the colonel's fear of his own insignificance, of being found out for who he really is.

As for Redford, we haven't seen him onscreen since 1998's “The Horse Whisperer,” which, even diehard Redford fans would agree, was not one of his best roles. Here, he's at his most Redford-esque. Heroic, humorous, reserved, beautiful. Most of all, he brings to the part of a near-mythic hero his persona as a near-mythic movie star. This is what movie-star acting is all about. And it's what holds “The Last Castle” together, no matter how simple-minded it gets.

And it does get pretty simple-minded at times. You have to wonder how they built that big catapault under the guards' noses. Or how they managed to hide all those weapons. Then there's Mark Ruffalo (“You Can Count On Me”), who has the William Holden role from “Stalag 17.” That is, the cynic so cynical that he takes bets on how many days it'll be before Irwin kills himself. Yet somehow you know he's going to come around and be a better person.

That's one of the messages director Rod Lurie wishes to impart. Winter sees only the worst in people, and so he brings out their worst. Irwin sees only the best.

As he showed with last year's “The Contender,” Lurie isn't a fancy director. He's more interested in his story and his characters, even if they are occasionally one-dimensional.

“The Last Castle” isn't about complexities. If that's what you're looking for, try “Mulholland Drive,” which also opens this weekend. This is the sort of movie that satisfies just by being what it is: a picture that makes you want to cheer when you see the flag waving.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution