ABOUT LAST NIGHT (1986, Edward Zwick)

 

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Two yuppies find romance in mid-’80s Chicago.

Starring  Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins

Written by  Tim Kazurinsky, Denise DeClue

Produced by  Jason Brett, Stuart Oken

Duration  113 minutes

I mean, honestly. Would you fancy trying to sell something called Sexual Perversity in Chicago to a mainstream cinema audience? No, I didn’t think so.

TriStar Pictures weren’t up to the task either, and they probably had Harvard graduates with master’s degrees in marketing and everything. Thus, David Mamet’s play joined a list of adapted works that were released with a different title. It’s a grand tradition that includes BABE (The Sheep-pig), FIELD OF DREAMS (Shoeless Joe), GOODFELLAS (Wise Guy), STAND BY ME (The Body) and BLADE RUNNER (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

Now, Mamet wasn’t involved in the production of ABOUT LAST NIGHT, although the frank, foul-mouthed pitter-patter dialogue certainly sounds like your man, especially the younger Belushi brother's explicit monologue about his own 'last night' that he unleashes towards a rapt Rob Lowe (who, as a notorious '80s sleaze hound, was probably taking notes).

I've never seen the play, but I'm sure it wasn’t totally discarded in the reimagining. So this gives me enough of an excuse to quote from Mamet’s excellent nonfiction book Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business, within which the Chicago-native gives the following writing advice:

The audience will undergo only the journey that the hero undergoes… Similarly, the audience will not suffer, wonder, discover, or rejoice to any extent greater than that to which the writer has been subjected. To suggest that the writer can, through exercise of craft, evade or avoid the struggle of creation is an error congruent with confounding the study of theology with prayer.

In other words, you have to have gone through what your characters go through, or at least your protagonist. Not necessarily literally, but definitely on an emotional level – clearly not everyone has to be Paul Schrader, depressed and living out of his car while scribbling down TAXI DRIVER.

In the case of ABOUT LAST NIGHT, however, there’s not much chance that Mamet, either of the two credited screenwriters or the viewer themselves haven't been through at least some of what our heroes face, even if only vicariously. It’s a pretty by-the-numbers account of well-worn romantic comedy/drama tropes, uncovering little that won’t be familiar from either one's own life or from other movies.

To wit: 

– An act one, getting-to-know-each-other montage, set to a song that seems to be called ‘So Far So Good’ and contains the lyrics "We've no way of knowing/How far this is going/If this isn't love/Then it's in the neighbourhood".

– The male and female pals separately discuss the politics of men telephoning women: frequency, proximity to how recently the lovers last saw each other, etc.

– Moore turns up at Lowe's door and then insists that she's not coming in; smash cut to them having sex in an empty bathtub with the built-in shower on full blast.

– A moving-in-together sequence that features much dropping of boxes and is set to another cheesy song that opines, "And it feels like a home/Though we've just begun/Ain’t it lucky/That we lucked into one another?"

– When Lowe's boss makes an unreasonable demand of him, he replies, "Fuck you!", to which his employer responds, "Fuck me? Fuck you!"

– "I love you" changes everything and is uttered at the exact halfway point, dividing the movie neatly into a ‘will this get serious?’ half followed by a ‘will they go the distance?’ one.

– That second half is full of suspicion and arguments and is waaaaay less fun.

There were few stars more attractive than post-BLAME IT ON RIO, pre-STRIPTEASE Demi Moore, and here her combustive mixture of endearing cuteness and gravel-voiced derision make up for Lowe's blandness – an actor who really only found his voice post-Brat Pack, a couple of seasons into TV's The West Wing. Belushi is billed as ‘James’ and not ‘Jim’, which usually indicates a dramatic role, but here he’s mostly slobbish comic relief and equips himself ably; ditto an hilarious Elizabeth Perkins, who really deserves to be known for more than playing Wilma Flintstone and for seducing a 12-year-old boy in BIG.

So all in all, ABOUT LAST NIGHT isn't terrible. But in terms of films based on David Mamet plays, it's certainly no GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS – which I'm surprised upon adapting no one wanted to rename REAL ESTATE WARS or FIVE ANGRY MEN.

Final thought: the title of this movie is uttered out loud by the characters several times, should you be after a new drinking game.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Not really, as we’re talking about a love affair and not a one-night stand. But I guess it’s catchier than ABOUT ALL THOSE PREVIOUS NIGHTS WE’VE SPENT TOGETHER DURING WHICH SOME THINGS HAPPENED …

What would a movie called ABOUT FIRST NIGHT be about?  That would be the ideal title for a behind-the-scenes DVD feature on the Sean Connery/Richard Gere 1995 Arthurian romp FIRST KNIGHT.

Previously:  THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Next time:  THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST SAMURAI (2003, Edward Zwick)

 

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After he is captured in battle, an American soldier starts to quite dig the Samurai culture that he’s supposed to be obliterating.

Starring  Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Timothy Spall, Hiroyuki Sanada

Written by  John Logan, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz

Produced by  Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Zwick, Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner

Duration  154 minutes

  

 

You know, you try to judge a film on its own merits. Not everything must aspire to be great art, or follow a familiar narrative path, or be blazingly original. As Robert De Niro tells a baffled John Cazale in THE DEER HUNTER, "This is this."

But when sitting down to watch THE LAST SAMURAI, I couldn’t blank out one thought that ran through my mind on repeat: "How much will it resemble DANCES WITH WOLVES?"

First, let’s talk about Tom Cruise. I like Tom Cruise. By that, I mean I like his contribution to cinema and his place in its history. I’m not interested in him personally and wouldn’t deign to focus on gossip and hearsay – he can believe in what he wants and be as eccentric on as many talk shows as he wishes. (I will say that he’s supposed to be generous and professional on set, and I've heard this first-hand: a plasterer friend of mine worked on 2017’s THE MUMMY at Shepperton Studios).

No, what I'm going on about is what Cruise represents. He is really the last of the old-school movie stars. Despite entering his 60s, he’s not fading away (his top grossing movies are 2022’s TOP GUN: MAVERICK and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE FALLOUT from 2018) and he remains a leading man, rather than making the late-career switch to character actor or villain, as many do.

And by ‘old-school’, I mean big in the late ’80s and into the ’90s, the period when the star was still everything. Kevin Costner? TV actor now; ditto Harrison Ford, despite reaching for Indy’s fedora one last time (in what turned out to be a pretty limp and desperate move). Mel Gibson? Reputation forever tarnished it seems; I suppose the jury’s still out on Will Smith.

Bruce Willis has retired for health reasons. Arnie? Stallone? Eddie Murphy? Jim Carrey? I guess Tom Hanks is up there too, but he hasn’t starred in any ‘last’ films, so I won’t dwell on him. From the ladies, you’ve really only got Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock; you could make cases for Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, too.

But despite my fondness for The Cruiser, his mega-wattage presence added an additional distraction to a critical analysis of THE LAST SAMURAI, morphing the abovementioned nagging question into "How much is it Tom Cruise trying to do DANCES WITH WOLVES?" – and even as far as ‘Did Cruise do this movie because one day he was pondering, “Hmm, if Kevin Costner can be a white saviour to America’s indigenous people, can I pull it off for the samurai in Japan?”’

OK, onto the film itself.

It’s the 1870s. Cruise enters the picture drunk, bloodshot and disillusioned. He’s a war hero, reduced to pantomiming his exploits on stage to flog Winchester rifles and working for the reliably slimy William Atherton (Walter ‘It’s true, this man has no penis’ Peck in GHOSTBUSTERS and Dick "Did ya get that?" Thornburg in DIE HARD).

He’s soon tapped up by government-types for a gig in Japan, where he’ll get the chance to pal around with Timothy Spall and Billy Connolly while training up some Japanese ‘savages’ in the art of warfare – the idea being that they’ll then be better equipped to defeat some rebels, a group of samurai who are not too keen on their new emperor. Eager for more beer money, Cruise accepts, and is soon showing villagers that you've really gotta lean in with the stock against your shoulder, and how to reload with that stick thing they used to have to poke down the muzzle.

That is, until he’s captured by Ken Watanabe’s samurais in a one-sided battle. For a while, Cruise is your regular disheartened POW, spending his days supplementing his alcoholism with sake and having even more PTSD battle-flashbacks than usual. But, in time, he starts to respect the samurai culture and gains their trust, eventually training in their ways and buddying up with Watanabe.

So, the samurai are the good guys of this story. But who could the genuine enemy be, if it’s not the American intruder or the emperor-supporters he was training up? Only Goddamn ninjas, that's who! And it's when defending his new pals against a night-time raid that The Cruiser really ingratiate himself – and starts to get real close to Watanabe’s sister.

If you’re familiar with the plot beats of DANCES WITH WOLVES, then it might sound like my fears were well founded. But, in fact, THE LAST SAMURAI is really a kind of inverted version of the 1990 Best Picture winner. The white boy doesn’t really change or ‘save’ anyone; rather it’s them who make the profound difference to his life. The title doesn’t even refer to Cruise, but to Watanabe – like if the Costner movie had instead been called KICKING BIRD, after Graham Greene’s Sioux elder.

So, all in all, a pleasant surprise. And the film holds up, in no small part due to Mr Reliable in the lead.

Something else surprised me about the movie, only this time in a not-good way: I wasn’t too keen on the Hans Zimmer score. It’s a bit of a generic regurgitation of better themes from his THE THIN RED LINE, GLADIATOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN era, only with a few Japanese flute noises thrown in.

I’d’ve much preferred it if he’d just trotted out some of his old cues from BLACK RAIN instead, maybe with those flutes replacing the ’80s synths. Ah, well.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  See review. They probably should have put the subtitle ‘By the way, it’s not the bloke on the poster’.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SAMURAI be about?  Hopefully it would be based on the side-scrolling Amiga-era slash-em-up platformer of the same name. I like to imagine Ed Zwick hiding in his trailer and playing it non-stop on the LEGENDS OF THE FALL set when he’s supposed to be prepping a scene or whatever, doing his own ‘swish-swish’ sword noises and fantasising about making his own samurai epic one day.

Previously:  THE LAST HURRAH

Next time:  X-MEN: THE LAST STAND 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com