THE LAST THING HE WANTED (2020, Dee Rees)

 

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While investigating something really important, other equally important things happen to a journalist during the course of her important investigation.

Starring  Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, Willem Dafoe

Written by  Marco Villalobos, Dee Rees

Produced by  Cassian Elwes, Dee Rees   

Duration   115 minutes

  

OK, so we’ve all been there. You’re watching a movie, and realise you don’t know what’s going on. If it’s within the first 10-15 minutes, then that’s fine: things are being set up, questions are being asked, you’re settling into its rhythm.

By the end of the first third, you can expect to know what those questions are, and won’t be surprised that they are developed further into act two. You’ll want to be surprised as to the exact ways they develop, but what the things that are developing are should come logically from what was set up in act one – and which will be resolved in act three (again, hopefully hitting that magic balance of surprising yet inevitable.)

OK, but what if you’re halfway through the movie – deep into act two – and you still don’t have a handle on things? And this far in you’re getting the sinking feeling that it’s unlikely comprehension will ever arrive?

There are times when this is acceptable. For instance. You’re on a date and the date is going well, extremely well. You may glance up at the screen every now and then and have no idea what its showing you – and not care in the slightest. Similarly, if you’ve gone to the movies in the early throes of an exciting new relationship, where the two of you feel contentedly cocooned in your own world where nothing outside matters, then you may intentionally lose track of what’s going on. Not following the plot becomes another of your hilarious in-jokes, since it's just another part of an outside world that's irrelevant to your loved-up interactions.

Other examples. Where being so convoluted is kind of the point, and the pleasure comes from watching the characters untangle the mess they’re in. Private eye stories come to mind, particularly the Howard Hawks/Bogart THE BIG SLEEP (1946) and, more recently, John McNaughton's trashterpiece WILD THINGS (1998).

Also. Movies where the plot doesn’t matter or isn’t the priority, where the regular conventions of narrative are not necessarily adhered to. These films could be purely allegorical, or follow a dream logic, or be artistic experiments in the form. See Andre Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, etc.

So fine, it can happen and not matter. Other causes can be the viewer’s fault: keeping half an eye on their phone; falling asleep mid-movie.

But then there are films that have a lot of plot, and want you to follow it, and really try to get you to follow it, but which fail and leave you baffled and frustrated.

Films like THE LAST THING HE WANTED.

I wrote in my review of THE LAST SUMMER that not recognising anyone at all from the cast or crew can be a bad sign – not always, but it rarely bodes well. With this film, it's a case of recognising people (A-listers Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck! Character acting legend Willem Dafoe! Dee Rees, director of critical darling MUDBOUND!), but never having heard of the movie. And it only came out three years ago!

OK, so you’ve got Ms Hathaway. She’s a journalist of some kind, being led into a jungle by an armed escort, presumably here to report on something. There are dead and burned bodies – alright, so she’s not here to study the local fauna for Botanical Monthly. She wears no makeup, another sign that this is a ‘serious’ role. And she smokes – that never happens anymore! She must be serious.

Cue Hathaway’s reflective voiceover, saying things like "I wanted to know why" and "I see now that the clock was ticking" and, um, "weightlessness seemed like the mode where we could be both time and the effect itself" – all over shots of classified papers. Then she’s grilling this politician type in a press conference, something to do with trade disputes, I think? Is this film a remake of STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE?

Then Ben Affleck turns up, looking a bit chunky, playing some kind of political aide who's getting told off by his boss, the same man who Hathaway just pissed off. Hathaway, meanwhile, is on the phone to ‘kiddo’ – so her job makes her an absent parent, too. Of course it does. And then she argues with her boss (editor?) who tells her to drop the story, for whatever reason, whatever the story actually is.

But then Willem Dafoe, playing her Dad, calls and they meet for a drink, him wearing sunglasses indoors and a maroon suit, and spouting homophobic barbs at bar patrons while munching handfuls of almonds. He delivers a lot of backstory, and possibly present-story, too; it’s hard to tell. It becomes apparent that the director has instructed the actors to speak extra fast, too, which just makes it even harder to keep up. It feels like about 40 minutes of story is hurtled at us in the space of 5 minutes.

THE LAST THING HE WANTED is a bit like when you’re on holiday and skipping through the channels in your hotel room and you start watching a movie in another language. You can follow what’s going on (it’s a thriller, she’s in danger, there’s a cover-up) but the details remain elusive.

It’s the kind of film that would benefit from turning the subtitles on – but I hate doing that, it’s distracting and shouldn’t be necessary if the filmmakers have done their job properly.

It’s also the kind of film where you get so much information that none of it sticks, and at the end you don’t really remember anything. It’s a tactic politicians use: instead of giving straight answers to complicated or thorny questions, they resort to obfuscation.

I tend to hold my movies in higher esteem and expect more from them than that.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I don’t really know who ‘he’ is supposed to refer to, let alone what it is he wants and whether or not he went on to want any other things or not.

What would a movie called THE FIRST THING HE WANTED be about?  Watching this movie, a stiff drink comes to mind.

Previously:  THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Next time:  THE LAST HORROR MOVIE 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST DUEL (2021, Ridley Scott)

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Two knights fight to the death after the wife of one accuses the other of rape; we're shown three different perspectives of what happened.

Starring  Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck 

Written by  Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon

Produced by  Ridley Scott, Kevin J Walsh, Jennifer Fox, Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck

Duration  152 minutes

Ridley does RASHOMON ...

Look, I’m just going to come out and say it: Ridley Scott is the most overrated director in the history of motion pictures.

So the three that everyone goes on about are:

– ALIEN: A great film, obviously, but I like it less each time someone erroneously tells me that it’s superior to ALIENS.

– BLADE RUNNER: But, but … it looks so nice! Oh, wow, yes it looks nice. And it has atmosphere! Mmm, atmosphere, right. Beyond that … not much to latch onto really, especially considering the source material is one of Philip K Dick’s very best.

– GLADIATOR: I remember thinking that this Russell Crowe from LA CONFIDENTIAL and THE INSIDER is now a proper movie star. Never for a moment did I imagine that the film itself, a fun but insubstantial swords-and-sandals romp, would be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, let alone win the bloody thing.

The rest of Scott's films fall into one of the following categories:

– Intriguing premises that don't turn into engaging films: ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, HOUSE OF GUCCI, ROBIN HOOD.

– Dull and pretentious: HANNIBAL, THE DUELLISTS, PROMETHEUS, ALIEN: COVENANT.

– Fun genre exercises, minus the fun: LEGEND, BLACK RAIN, BODY OF LIES, THE COUNSELLOR.

– Boring ‘epics’: EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE.

– Totally forgettable and now totally forgotten: WHITE SQUALL, GI JANE, A GOOD YEAR, AMERICAN GANGSTER, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.

To be fair, you can’t go wrong with THELMA & LOUISE, although that succeeds due to the strength of the screenplay and performances; ditto MATCHSTICK MEN. And even I can't deny that BLACK HAWK DOWN is a top-notch modern warfare flick. And THE MARTIAN is OK.

But overall, the scales are heavily tilted in one direction. The main problem is that Scott clearly doesn’t care much about the screenplays that land on his desk, beyond their aesthetic possibilities and figuring out how he's gonna move the people on screen from one flashy sequence to the next. It’s like he’s been given a script written in a language that he doesn’t speak and just goes through the pages shooting it anyway. Maybe it’s a former ad director thing: David Fincher has said that he’s not interested in what's being said, only the images, and that the words could be anything.

So alright then, what about THE LAST DUEL?

Well … it’s good! I mean, by Ridley’s standards anyway. I wasn’t sure about Adam Driver as an irresistible ladies’ man and Matt Damon lets his beard do most of the acting. But Ben Affleck is fun, dropping C-bombs in a crowd-pleasing performance reminiscent of his enjoyably vainglorious turn in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Jodie Comer rounds out the cast with a sensitive and engrossing turn, eclipsing her bigger-name co-stars.

The GOOD WILL HUNTING buddies collaborated on the script with Nicole Holofcener, each tackling one third of its same-event-from-a-different-perspective structure. And since he makes this one of the rare occasions where he prioritises the writing, rather than lingering on big impressive sets or sword-flinging battles while forgetting about tiny elements like ‘drama’ and ‘narrative’, Ridders manages to deliver something that holds the attention for its whole two-and-a-half-hours.

I was particularly impressed at how the movie touches upon contemporary questions about consent, gender equality and male entitlement without being anachronistic or overly political. I guess you could say that it completes Sir Ridley’s feminist trilogy, after THELMA & LOUISE and GI JANE.

Not bad for an 84-year-old codger from South Shields. Still a pity about the batting average, though. 

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The whole thing is based on a true story, and the duel in question was apparently the last officially recognised one in France, so good job on the old historical accuracy, everyone. Maybe more came later in other countries, but I guess there isn’t an IMDb for duels, so who knows. (Also: who cares.)

What would a movie called THE FIRST DUEL be about?  These little tiffs tended to be over ‘matters of honour’, so it would probably just be two blokes squabbling because one copied the other’s chainmail pattern or something. Calling Sir Ridders, we need your tedious touch! 

Previously:  THE LAST AIRBENDER

Next time:  PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com