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When a death in the family forces a successful dude to return to his old neighbourhood, he can't wait to leave again – until he actually (gasp!) ends up wanting stay.
Starring Jeremy Piven, Taryn Manning, Zach McGowan, Cathy Moriarty, Jamie Kennedy, Bruce Dern
Written by Paolo Pilladi, Greg Lingo
Produced by DJ Dodd, Rob Simmons, Ante Novakovic, Paolo Pilladi
Duration 102 minutes
"Stan, you have the undeserved ego of Jeremy Piven!"
– Francine Smith, American Dad
Actors are supposed to be likable. That's the whole idea, right? Their names go above the title and they lure us in to see the film. We want to look at them and listen to them for two hours, to be by their side during a succession of challenging scenarios.
Even the ones who usually play villains are charismatic in a fun, love-to-hate-them kind of way, with an anti-likability that does what it needs to do.
So how the hell do you explain the continuing career of Jeremy Piven? Maybe he's a perfectly nice bloke in real life, who knows. (Although it seems unlikely.) But his onscreen persona can be described with one word: assholish.
Who actually is this guy, anyway? He's mostly known as John Cusack's pal: they starred in 10 movies together; well, Cusack usually starred and let Piven wander into frame to deliver a few lines now and then.
Or maybe that should be former pal. In 2007, Piven implied that they hadn't collaborated since 2003's lesser John Grisham adaptation THE RUNAWAY JURY because his old pal was jealous of his success in Entourage. OK, Piven won a few Emmys for the show, but I mean come on! What kind of conceited narcissist thinks that a fellow actor whose career has seen him work with Rob Reiner, James L Brooks, Cameron Crowe, John Hughes, Herbert Ross, Woody Allen, Alan Parker, Clint Eastwood and Terrence Malick is going to get an attack of the green-eyed monster because you get to say "Hug it out, bitch!" to Kevin Connolly every Sunday night on HBO?
(Plus, although it was hardly Piven's fault, I always resented that as good as he certainly was on Entourage, he stole focus from the equally award-worthy and hilarious Kevin Dillon, who played overshadowed older brother Johnny 'Drama' Chase.)
Here are some examples of Mr Piven's assholish contributions to the silver screen:
– LUCAS (1986): Debuting in this sensitive teen drama, he plays a school bully who manages to be the biggest prick in a film that also stars Charlie Sheen.
– JUDGEMENT NIGHT (1993): Plays a yuppie scumbag who doesn't report his involvement in a hit-and-run, and spends the movie being patronising to the residents of the lower income community he and his pals have brazenly wandered into.
– PCU (1994): Plays the leader of a fraternity who are rebelling against the modern sensibilities of America's most politically correct university.
– HEAT (1995): Plays a dodgy veterinarian who patches up villains like Val Kilmer's
character after they've, say, taken a bullet during a daring armed bank
robbery in downtown LA. And if you read sequel novel Heat 2, it turns
out he didn't bother to do a very good job.
– VERY BAD THINGS (1999): Plays the member of a stag party whose accidental
(not that that's an excuse) killing of a prostitute sets all the bad things in
motion. Manages to stand out as notably sleazy in a film that can most
accurately be described as a sleazefest.
– BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001): Plays the pilot of the first black hawk that goes
down. He's hardly culpable (or maybe he is, I can't remember), but the crash
does lead to a lot of carnage.
– SNOKIN' ACES (2006): Plays a magician and wannabe gangster who rats out his
friends, and whom everybody who isn't in law enforcement wants to see dead (and
the cops probably do too, just so they won’t have to listen to any more of his coke-fuelled rants).
– ROCKNROLLA (2008): Plays a smarmy American music exec who gets in hot water
with the Cockney mafia because of his connection to a druggie rock star. While
wearing a silly hat and a white plastic wristwatch.
– THE GOODS: LIVE FREE, SELL HARD (2009): Director Adam McKay tries to make Piven into
the new Will Ferrell. No one swallows it and the experiment is swiftly pulled.
– SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011): Plays the villain. Looks
comfortable with the brief.
And, of course, his TV role as super-agent Ari Gold brought him to plaudit-receiving levels of assholism.
Believe it or not, I used to get the same kind of negative vibe from Bradley Cooper, having first encountered him in assholish roles, which included WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, WEDDING CRASHERS and THE HANGOVER. But Cooper gradually reinvented himself and is now a thoughtful and compelling actor (not to mention writer/director).
Could it be that Piven has actually done the same, and all I needed to do was give him another chance, this time in one of his rare starring vehicles? Let's find out!
In LAST CALL, J-Piv plays a successful real estate developer (two of his early lines: "I closed two deals before lunch" and "if you need to find me, just email my assistant" – so, basically Ari Gold in another industry), who moved to The City from The Suburbs and reluctantly saunters back home for his mother's funeral.
Yes, this is Piven headlining a form of those terrible Hallmark romcoms where the high-flying protagonist (usually a woman) returns to the hometown that they boast about escaping from, only to have their heart melted by the small-town ways they'd told everyone were beneath them. And, of course, they find romance and decide to stay permanently.
All of that happens in LAST CALL. Piven meets up with his former neighbour, played by Taryn Manning, and the sparks fly (or at least they do according to the script -- in reality, the two actors have zero chemistry). And he decides to help his old man keep the family pub in business, finding the kind of satisfaction and meaningfulness that he finally realises his wealth and white-collar existence had been denying him, etc etc.
So, the film is 100% uninspired in both premise and execution. But what about our man?
Well, my opinion remains unchanged. The Piv actually looks pretty bored throughout – at least in Entourage his assholery had some energy to it. Here he just lumbers through endless drinking montages with hammered and aggressive salt-of-the-Earth types who babble the kind of tirades that are hard to tolerate when you too are drunk and totally unbearable when sober, occasionally broken up by appearances by faces Bruce Dern (as a barfly), Cathy Moriarty (as a neighbour with a random accent), Jamie Kennedy (as another barfly) and Jack McGee (as Piven's dad, with an accent that's definitely supposed to be Irish).
For LAST CALL, the filmmakers clearly reslised that directing Piven to be less of an asshole was fruitless. They instead surrounded him with other assholish people to try to make him seem less assholey in comparison. The unfortunate result? One giant asshole-fest.
One star out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Well, the drinking never seems to stop, even for licensing laws, so no.
What would a movie called FIRST CALL be about? A
biopic of Alexander Graham Bell, climaxing with him dialling on his new
invention for the first time and tensely waiting for the person on the other
end to pick up.
Previously: THE LAST SONG
Next time: LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
