* * *
In 2003, three buddies and veterans of the Vietnam War reunite to bury one of their sons, himself a Marine killed in the Second Persian Gulf.
Starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Yul Vazquez, Cicely Tyson
Written by Richard Linklater, Darryl Ponicsan
Produced by Ginger Sledge, John Sloss
Duration 124 minutes
What makes an artist? Finishing things.
Anyone can start a creative project, but you only become an artist by finishing; until then, you’re just toying with ideas.
Richard Linklater is a finisher. He perseveres, no matter how long it takes. As was well publicised upon its release in 2014, the director's BOYHOOD entailed 12 years of on/off filming. At any point he could have called it quits it and just edited whatever footage he’d got so far into a final cut. But he didn’t compromise, he got to the end. He finished it.
Not content with committing to a decade-and-change for a movie, Linklater is currently working on MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, touted to take 20 years – in reverse chronological order, apparently, however the hell that’s going to work. As ambitious and bonkers as it might sound, few would bet against him delivering. BOYHOOD was not a one off: his BEFORE trilogy spanned 21 years, even if that scope wasn't planned at the outset.
Now, I don't know
if the Texan filmmaker saw Hal Ashby’s THE LAST DETAIL when it first came out –
he would have been 13 at the time. But considering he debuted as a feature
director in 1988 and that there is a 44-year gap between LAST DETAIL and LAST
FLAG FLYING, it’s fair to say that Ashby's film had been on Linklater’s mind
for a while, and he'd bided his time: until he could secure the rights, until
he felt ready, until the moment had come. And when it did, he got it made.
What he turned in is what’s known as a ‘spiritual sequel’. Which is what? Well, it’s not an official follow-up, but if you squint a bit, you can imagine that it is.
People loved Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan on the end of telephones in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, so they were paired up again to exchange clunky ’90s emails in YOU’VE GOT MAIL. Gene Hackman was iconic as a paranoid surveillance expert in THE CONVERSATION, but what if that picture had been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Tony Scott and had a ridiculously stacked cast? You’d get ENEMY OF THE STATE.
Sometimes the spiritual sequel is even helmed by the same person. CARLITO’S WAY, for example, feels like De Palma exploring the fate of SCARFACE’S Tony Montana if he’d stayed alive and tried to go straight; whereas Scorsese has as good as admitted that CASINO is GOODFELLAS 2.
In the case of LAST FLAG FLYING ... well ... it's all a little complicated. I’ll let The Seattle Review of Books do the work for me:
LAST FLAG FLYING is a spiritual sequel to THE LAST DETAIL, but it’s not a direct sequel. Both films are based on novels written by Darryl Ponicsan, and both feature three military men on a road trip. But the men in LAST FLAG are Marines, not Navy; the names of the characters are different; and the timelines of the films don’t quite line up evenly. Still, LAST FLAG picks up the spiritual threads of LAST DETAIL and spins them out into a [new] story.
That’s cleared that up, then.
So was it worth it for Linklater to finish making LAST FLAG and for the viewer to sit down and finish watching it? Er ... I suppose. Just about. It's not one of his strongest, that’s for sure, certainly not joining the ranks of DAZED AND CONFUSED or the abovementioned decades-spanning projects. And it falls short when compared to LAST DETAIL, lacking its kind-of predecessor’s raw power, skewing as it does toward the sentimental and rote, rather than the looseness and cynicism Ashby delivered back in ’73.
It’s a mostly sombre mediation on friendship, duty, honour, God, war, the passage of time and the decisions we make. Which is fine and everything, but despite a welcome streak of humour, it can get a little heavy handed. And some of the levity misses the mark: the story is set in 2003 and boy are we not allowed to forget it, with multiple characters proclaiming amazement about how much you can find out on the Internet and a running gag about what a revelation mobile phones are, references that would have seemed trite even back in the early ’00s.
It survives on the likability of its cast. As the bereaved father, Carrell is poignant and proves again that he’s just as at home in drama as with comedy; Fishburne manages to have both a moral centre and a devious twinkle in his eye; and the roguish Cranston does Jack Nicholson proud and then some, more evidence of how lamentable it is that his career didn't quite kick on post-Breaking Bad.
So LAST FLAG FLYING turns out to be a solid if unspectacular watch, from start until – yes – finish.
Three stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Hundreds of millions of flags are flying aloft all over America at this very moment, so no.
What would a movie called FIRST
FLAG FLYING be about? Debate presumably rages in expert quarters, but according to this site, it was probably either Scotland, Austria, Latvia,
Denmark or Albania. However, I prefer to instead imagine a slapstick comedy
about a hapless Naval recruit who is struggling to hoist the stars and stripes
up its pole, having never before been asked to do so.
Previously: LAST VEGAS
Next time: LAST SURVIVORS
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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