Review #15 THE LAST KEEPERS (2013, Maggie Greenwald)

 

* *

Life’s a bitch, when you’re a witch – especially one which only wants to go through the usual coming of age stuff, which will hopefully not mean being ostracised by peers or shunned by the family of witches, of which you are one.

Starring  Aidan Quinn, Virginia Madsen, Zosia Mamet, Sam Underwood, Olympia Dukakis

Written by  Peter Hutchings, Christina Mengert

Produced by  Brice Dal Farra, Claude Dal Farra, Carly Hugo, Lauren Munsch

Duration  85 minutes  

 

How and why do actors end up in the roles that we the viewers struggle to explain the reasoning behind?

In the early ’00s, Mark Wahlberg starred in a couple of seriously ropey remakes in close succession. Nearly a decade later, Colin Farrell followed suit. Marky Mark essayed PLANET OF THE APES (2001) and THE ITALIAN JOB (2003), while Dublin’s favourite son signed on for FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) and TOTAL RECALL (2012). Were the actors making a conscious choice? Was Colin copying Mark a few years after the fact?

Furthermore, not only did each do his remakes quickly to apparently get them out of his system, but neither actor could resist taking another stab again later, with THE GAMBLER (2014) and THE BEGUILED (2017) – the equivalent to coming home from a night out having sobered up a little and then deciding it would be a good idea to crack open a can of lager from the fridge.

Meanwhile, it may have escaped the casual viewer’s attention that between 1993 and 2003, double Oscar-winner Gene Hackman featured in three John Grisham adaptations. THE FIRM, THE CHAMBER and THE RUNAWAY JURY – and that third one was his penultimate theatrically released credit before he retired to focus on writing his own novels! Was Hackman desperate to complete this dubious hat-trick, and only having done so did he feel that his work as an actor was complete?

So, now then, with THE LAST KEEPERS, we have the example of Aidan Quinn.

Back in 1998, Quinn co-starred in the film PRACTICAL MAGIC, in which Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play modern-day Massachusetts witches. Quinn serves as the love interest for the former, in what was a supporting role at best in a pretty insubstantial piece of fluff.

Then, fast forward 15 years to him signing on the dotted line for THE LAST KEEPERS, another slight tale of ‘nice’ witches living in our day and age.

So, what happened? Did 1998 represent the happiest time of Quinn’s career, and so he wanted to emulate the film he did that year? With someone like Aidan Quinn, it’s hard to pinpoint a professional highpoint. He had the looks and presence that should have made him a leading man, but his bit-of-rough to Daryl Hannah’s good girl in debut RECKLESS failed to catapult him into the mainstream. The closest he ever came to headlining something notable was BLINK, but Madeline Stowe was still the bigger star.

Alternatively, was it the actual content of PRACTICAL MAGIC that Quinn wanted to revisit? Maybe he’d been badgering his agent to keep an eye out for similar scripts ever since, and when THE LAST KEEPERS came along he snatched it right up.

We can but speculate.

What is easier to definitively judge is the quality of THE LAST KEEPERS. And that quality is... meh.

The story centres on Zosia Mamet, a teenaged social outcast with only one friend who makes herself a dress out of recycled plastic bags – and actually wears it to high school.

She lives a reclusive and idyllic countryside life with her parents (an earring-sporting Quinn and the agelessly beautiful Virginia Madsen), along with Olympia Dukakis as a salty grandma. They are a family of practicing witches who shun the outside society that doesn't accept them and their ‘traditions’.

But Zosia’s desire to spread her wings and see the outside world – i.e. go to college, date a gawky classmate or, during a rebellious phase, the local badboy – send her witchy development off in directions her family had not expected and which alarm and threaten them.

So yeah, this is one of those stories about an adolescent witch finding herself while her supernatural abilities begin to flourish. I guess being a witch is an empowerment fantasy for girls? Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, THE CRAFT ... presumably some aspect of HOCUS POCUS and/or its legacy sequel? This must be the female version of how much the boys want to hang out with creatures of the night (MONSTER SQUAD), hunt down treasure on a pirate ship (THE GOONIES) and shoot bad guys and blow shit up (LAST ACTION HERO).

THE LAST KEEPERS plods along, with plenty of talk of chosen ones and prophesies of gifts and powers and the associated responsibilities. The big theme is the needs of the individual versus those of wider society, a weighty thing to deal with at any age, but especially as a teenager, when it feels like the whole world is actually conspiring against you.

But the movie never really raises the pulse. It feels like a pilot for a TV show that wants to be the next Sabrina or Charmed. Young Zosia Mamet is a little stilted as the lead, but I'm not convinced it’s really her fault – she could have done with some of her father’s famously coarse dialogue to chew over. Her most affecting scenes end up being her heart-to-hearts with an underplaying Quinn as her sympathetic dad.

Hold on. I just figured it out. As I just alluded to, Zosia Mamet is the daughter of David Mamet, noted playwright and movie writer/director. So maybe old Aidan was hoping to get in with her and bag an intro with the old man, and thus steer his career away from having to ever appear in something like PRACTICAL MAGIC again – or, indeed, another THE LAST KEEPERS.

Two stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I mean, we’re assuming that the title refers to the central witching family, but I never really got what it was they were supposed to be the keepers of. Are they the last witches left in the world? Or maybe just in Hudson Valley, New York?

What would a movie called THE FIRST KEEPERS be about?  I’d like to see a biopic of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton who, with 1,489, holds the global appearance record in men’s football.

Previously:  THE LAST POSSE

Next time:  LAST ACTION HERO

 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #14 THE LAST POSSE (1953, Alfred L Werker)

 

* * *

A New Mexico town forms a posse to go after a rancher who robbed another rancher; none of the ranchers are jolly by the end.

Starring  Broderick Crawford, John Derek, Charles Bickford, Wanda Hendrix

Written by  Seymour Bennett, Connie Lee Bennett, Kenneth Gamet

Produced by  Harry Joe Brown

Duration  73 minutes   

When I was at school, I think it was in Year 9 English, we had to come up with questions for a survey and use them to poll our classmates. Probably we had to then write up the results into some kind of discursive essay, I don’t remember. What I do remember is that my survey was about films (natch) and it included finding out which genre of film was the most popular.

Seeing that this was the mid-’90s, I'm certain that I didn’t put ‘superhero’ as a choice – ah, sweet, merciful nostalgia. But among the actions and romances and comedies and horrors, western was in there. And came in rock bottom.

Westerns were old. Westerns were slow. Westerns were boring. My student polling came post-DANCES WITH WOLVES and UNFORGIVEN, and although I’m certain I had seen and enjoyed those award-winning movies by then, my views that day still concurred with my peers’.

Westerns were used to clog up the afternoon TV schedules, always skipped straight past when channel surfing. No one played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in the playground when I was little. My generation was the one that was supposed to flock to WILD WILD WEST in 1999 – what were Barry Sonnenfeld, Jon Peters and Will Smith thinking?

Today, having widened my cinematic pallet, I know better. I know that just like any genre, the western has its good and bad entries, its different stylistic eras, its straight and skewed interpretations. Nevertheless, I still approached THE LAST POSSE with trepidation; happily, my caution turned out to be unwarranted.

The film starts off with the titular posse returning to town. The sheriff was among their party and "looks half-dead". There's a prevailing sense of everything not having gone as planned.

"What happened out there?" the town’s judge asks.

Well, the early reports are that four people were killed, the desert "changed all of us" and they didn't even get ahold of the stolen money which was whole point of mounting up in the first place. Plus, the remaining members of the posse aren’t too keen for the sheriff to make a full recovery, lest he reveal more of went on during that dusty journey.

"What's all this about?" someone else asks.

Thus commences flashbacks to show why the posse was necessary and then what happened when it rode out. Some kind of cattle dispute led to a saloon punch-up and then more than a hundred grand (surely millions today!) got swiped and scarpered off with. It’s established that the now-comatose sheriff is a drunk, but his drinking is clearly spurred on by the kind of guilt that only comes from possessing a strong moral compass, something that puts him at odds with the rest of the men who set out on their horses. And it turns out that the lawman knows a lot more about his fellow posse-mates than they’re comfortable with.

Ultimately, THE LAST POSSE is a THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE-style tale of the corrupting power of money, and the lengths to which man’s greed will take him. The flashbacks and flashforwards are pretty sophisticated for 1953, although I guess CITIZEN KANE had been out for more than a decade at that point. Its multiple-perspective structure makes this another RASHOMON-inspired flick, with the Kurosawa classic having been released three years earlier.

It's pacey, with the hour-and-a-quarter runtime leaving little fat on the bones, and the structure is employed confidently to generate suspense, surprises and pathos. It actually feels more like a noir than a western, with its moody tone, double-crosses and duplicitous characters, not to mention the choice to film in black and white.

I don’t know if THE LAST POSSE would have changed the minds of my Year 9 English classmates, but I certainly wasn't bored. It's not even really a ‘typical’ Western, but maybe that speaks to the whole fallacy of the idea of ‘genre’ in the first place.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Debatable. After all the kerfuffle this time, it might be a while before the town puts a new posse together. But they were so keen to go in that direction that it seems unlikely they’ll be able to resist next time there’s troubled occurring.

What would a movie called THE FIRST POSSE be about? The first one I came across was Mario Van Peebles' 1993 effort, titled simply POSSE. Well, I remember the video cover, anyway.

Previously:  RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

Next time:  THE LAST KEEPERS

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #13 RAMBO: LAST BLOOD (2019, Adrian Grünberg)

 

* *

When his adopted niece is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and forced into prostitution, ex-green beret John J Rambo creaks out of his easy chair and heads towards the border to rescue her and murder anyone who looks at him funny.

Starring  Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal

Written by  Sylvester Stallone, Matthew Cirulnick

Produced by  Avi Lerner, Kevin King Templeton, Yariv Lerner, Les Weldon

Duration  89 minutes

And so it was in the Year of Our Lord 2019 AD that we finally concluded the epic saga of John Rambo, the beloved character who millions, nay, billions had taken into their hearts throughout decades of adventures. Finally, stripping away the layers of this complex man to give humanity a profound insight into the psyche of a true icon of cinema.

Uh, wait a minute …

Is Rambo really so beloved? What do we actually know about him? OK, let's see ... he fought in Vietnam and came home with PTSD. He wandered into a small town and got run out by the mean sheriff into the woods, where he was forced into waging his own survivalist war. Later, he returned to Vietnam to rescue American POWs and ‘win this time’; not long after that, he teamed up with the Taliban (not evil, yet) to fight the Russians ( … no comment) in the Afghan desert. Then, after a two-decade gap, he took his sullen and increasingly rubbery face deep into the Burmese wilderness to rescue a group of Christian evangelists by blowing mercenaries’ limbs off with bursts from a 50-cal machine gun. Finally, he rested for another 10 years before popping up in a fifth movie – more about which in a minute.

But who exactly is John Rambo? Do we really know him the way we do, say, Rocky Balboa? No. No, we do not. He’s not a person, he’s a punchline; a byword for Reagan-era excess and American jingoism. Rambo has no personality and certainly no sense of humour. His one facial expression is a fixed stoic grimace, coming from not being able to process how his undying love for his country has only ever been met with betrayal. 

In RAMBO III, there’s a bit where an Afghan boy is curious about this stranger who has just been described as ‘not what our people are used to seeing’ (don't worry mate, he sticks out back at home as well) and so grills him with getting-to-know-you questions; the most Rambo gives away is, ‘I'm from Arizona’.

Even Stallone himself – who although not the character’s creator (that would be David Morrell for his novel First Blood) did at least adopt him, taking writing credits on each instalment and directing the fourth – eventually stopped taking Rambo seriously. Witness this exchange from 1989’s TANGO & CASH, released only a year after RAMBO III (Stallone plays Tango):

 

Local cop: "This guy thinks he's Rambo."

Tango: "Rambo … is a pussy."

Nevertheless, Sly kept returning to the old soldier after that, first with the bluntly named and staggeringly violent RAMBO and then latterly in LAST BLOOD, with which Stallone intended to give the character a proper send-off. Well, I assume that was what motivated him, rather than wanting to add an extra wing to his Beverly Hills mansion or anything like that.

So how did Stallone decide to deliver this Rambo requiem? Well, as I was watching it, something was really nagging at me. I kept being reminded of another film, but I could never quite put my finger on what that was. Perhaps a closer examination of LAST BLOOD’S plot will shed some light:

After his loved-one is TAKEN in Mexico by a sex-trafficking ring, Rambo decides that he has TAKEN enough shit, and, having TAKEN his daily meds, decides that everything will be better once he has TAKEN himself across the border and TAKEN her back.

Hmm. It’s unclear why Sly felt compelled to resurrect one of his most iconic characters just to make his own ‘old dude steps up to fight and is better at it than we might have expected’ movie.  There's a certain novelty when non-tough guys and character actors do this, like Sean Penn (THE GUNMAN) or Bob Odenkirk (NOBODY) or even Liam Nesson himself, once upon a time. But putting an established action star into what is by now a stale and tired sub-genre (the first TAKEN came out back in 2008) just seems pointless.

Which, sadly, is the most accurate way to describe RAMBO: LAST BLOOD: there really is no point to it. The previous movie already ended the saga of John J fittingly, with the big guy finally returning to the family ranch back in Arizona and its mailbox marked ‘R Rambo’. ( … Rocky Rambo?)

LAST BLOOD doesn’t feel like a RAMBO movie, either. The previous instalments may have been increasingly over-the-top, but they did strive for some level of realism, or at least plausibility. This one has a septuagenarian excavating a replica of the Cu Chi tunnels all by himself (possibly not the best way to move on from the Vietnam War?) and then fashioning booby traps that would make Kevin McAllister squirm. Added to this, entries one to four were, at heart, ‘issues’ movies – they were actually about something, regardless of how gung-ho their approach may have been. The only issue here is whether Rambo can still kill everyone without getting a hernia.

None of this would matter if the movie landed. But sadly, despite bringing all the gory and inventive kills we came for, the result is grim, ugly and unpleasant.

I definitely have a lot of respect for Sylvester Stallone. How many stars have developed three franchises for themselves on both sides of the camera, including a brand new one in THE EXPENDABLES at 64 years old? You could argue it’s actually four with the ESCAPE PLAN series (its lead’s age when the first entry was released: 67), although I don’t count that one since it’s strictly an acting gig only.

But you have to know when it’s time to put a horse out to pasture. When it comes to John Rambo, ‘last’ really should mean that we won’t ever see him again.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I certainly bloody hope so.

What would a movie called RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD be about?  No need to speculate.

Previously:  LAST MAN DOWN 

Next time:  THE LAST POSSE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #12 LAST MAN DOWN (2021, Fansu Njie)

 

*

His wife's murder pushes a special forces dude to go off and live in the woods, but when a wounded woman needs his help he ditches the hermit life to right some wrongs and crack some skulls.

Starring  Daniel Stisen, Olga Kent, Daniel Nehme, Stanislav Yanevski

Written by  Andreas Vasshaug

Produced by  Fansu Njie, Daniel Stisen

Duration  87 minutes

The first question the viewer asks themselves about LAST MAN DOWN is, "Who is this Daniel Stisen, whose name is above the title?"

According to DanielStisen.com, his is a life dedicated to "Acting & Fitness’". He's from Mandal, Norway, where his dad owned a gym. He possesses the "Best Buildt [sic] In The Film Industry". I don't know about ‘best’, but clearly the man knows what a dumbbell is for. Indeed, as the biography on his site tells us, "Daniel practically grew up in the gym and started working out at age 5." Is that even legal? Maybe in Scandinavia …

So, OK. He’s a big guy. But why is Daniel Stisen starring in a movie?

Well, the website tells us that after winning a load of bodybuilding trophies he trained as a stuntman, took some acting lessons, founded Daniel Stisen Productions, and then decided he wanted to be the world’s first Norwegian action hero (with Austria, Belgium and Sweden already represented – one point for each!).

Right, I can get behind that. But perhaps the more pertinent question is, should Daniel Stisen be starring in a movie?

The nice way of putting the answer is, "the jury’s out." The more accurate way would be, "the jury’s out, but oh look, here they come immediately back in, having reached a unanimous verdict with no reasonable doubts whatsoever."

Stisen definitely looks the part, but his screen presence is purely limited to the physical. He speaks in a gruff monotone; I’m reminded of MIDNIGHT RUN when Charles Grodin tells Robert De Niro, "You have two forms of expression: silence and rage." There are one-liners, but the delivery is garbled. Overall, he sorta reminds me of Ben Stiller playing an actor trying too hard to play an action hero in TROPIC THUNDER.

But, look, he's new. I'd rather give him a few more films before passing judgement. No one gave up on Arnie after HERCULES IN NEW YORK or Stallone following THE PARTY AT KITTY AND STUD’S. And he’s no worse than the rest of the cast – especially his co-star, Olga Kent, who is so bad that every time she walked in front of a tree, I thought she’d gone offscreen.

LAST MAN DOWN'S terrible acting mixed with the dire-logue makes you feel like you're listening to a read-through where none of the actors turned up, so instead uninterested crewmembers are wading through the script line-by-line for an apathetic director.

"Fear is an illusion."

"But this is very real."

"Pain is real. Death is real."

"So is love, John. And life!"

"Love ends. Life ends."

... You get the idea.

Let’s talk about this ‘John’. In the opening credits, the movie doesn't just put our Dan’s name first. It announces "Daniel Stisen as John Wood". Yes, LAST MAN DOWN rather hilariously tries to give the impression that this is an iconic actor playing a legendary character, like it’s ‘Christopher Reeve as Superman’ or, I dunno, ‘Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln’.

But wait, could there be more going on here? I mean, John Wood lives in the woods, where he drinks a lot of vodka and reads Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (which must be challenging half-cut). So maybe there’s supposed to be something archetypal and existential at play, like the way Walter Hill's THE DRIVER has characters called only The Detective, The Player, The Driver, etc. And maybe the flashbacks that consume most of the first act aren’t wonkily structured and emotionally anaemic, maybe they're actually meant to be indicative of our hero’s perma-sozzled and battle-numbed state?

Hmm. Let’s not give LAST MAN DOWN more credit than it deserves ... which is none.

What is beyond doubt is that le cinéma de Schwarzenegger is the clear model. Within the first five minutes we’re reminded of COMMANDO (strained muscles carrying logs) and THE RUNNING MAN (Wood protesting the shooting of innocents); later, outdoorsy traps are set a la PREDATOR. And ‘John’ as a first name? What, like the big man in KINDERGARTEN COP (Kimble), ERASER (Kruger) and, of course, COMMANDO’S Matrix? Not to mention other icons of the genre, like John McClane in DIE HARD and John Rambo in, well, you know.

But the action! Is the action up to par? No, it is not. It’s poorly staged and edited, choppy and hard to keep track of. Tension is conspicuous by its absence. It feels at once excessive and tame. Slo-mo is used haphazardly; I’m confident that director Fansu Njie will never be spoken of in the same breath as Sam Peckinpah.

LAST MAN DOWN turns into a siege movie, but without any kind of escalation or momentum, just wave after wave of bad guys attacking and being dispatched. Soon, what should be exciting and satisfying starts to become repetitive and routine, the filmic equivalent of putting out the laundry or changing the cat’s litter tray.

The movie is a step up from running round the garden with your mates shooting each other with sticks. But not by much. Come to think of it, I definitely had more fun doing that back in the day than I did watching LAST MAN DOWN.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  A sequel is in the works! Or at least Danny Boy has posed for the poster. 'In development' on IMDb can mean anything, so I hope the Daniel Stisen Fanclub isn’t getting its hopes up prematurely (Hi, Mrs Stisen! Hasn’t your son done well?).

What would a movie called FIRST MAN DOWN be about?  Probably something like the extended tangent in AUSTIN POWERS that shows the consequence when one of Dr Evil’s unnamed henchman is killed.

 

Previously:  THE LAST MERCENARY

Next time:  RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com