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

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

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

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

THE LAST MERCENARY (2021, David Charhon)

 

* * * 

A veteran secret service agent returns to France to bail out the 25-year-old son he’s never met, who is in a whole heap of comically perilous espionage-tinged trouble.

Starring  Jean-Claude Van Damme, Alban Ivanov, Assa Sylla, Samir Decazza

Written by  David Charhon, Ismael Sy Savane

Produced by  Jean-Charles Levy, Nicolas Manuel, Olivier Albou   

Duration  110 minutes

Out of all the ’80s/’90s tough guys, there was something unique about Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Sure, on the surface, he seemed to be another Schwarzenegger, with a long, ‘European’-sounding name and an accent the movie often had to explain. He could be vulnerable, but then so could Stallone. And he kicked genuine ass, owing to a real-life proficiency in martial arts (shōtōkan karate and kickboxing), but how was that any different to Seagal (aikido)?

Yet nevertheless, he stood out. He wasn’t quite as hulking, but being more understated made him seem deadlier; like he could actually exist in the real world and would pummel the shit out of you, given the provocation – possibly by doing the splits and punching you in the groin.

And, crucially, he seemed to not take himself too seriously. Witness his bemused innocent Luc Deveraux in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, fighting off a truck stop full of attackers while never interrupting his lunch; or the gloriously mulleted Chance Boudreaux in Cajun-flavoured masterpiece HARD TARGET, who thinks nothing of standing upright on a speeding motorbike and firing a Beretta 92FS handgun while on a collision course with a truck.

As the ’90s progressed, JCVD suffered the dip in relevance that affected all of his ass-kicking contemporaries. I’d pinpoint his turn towards direct-to-VHS status as the same thing that befell Seagal: humility turned into hubris and he decided to helm his own project. With the ponytailed one, it was 1993’s eco-lecture ON DEADLY GROUND; for Jean-Claude, it came in the shape of THE QUEST (1996), another tournament movie that failed to recapture the magic of BLOODSPORT or KICKBOXER, or even LIONHEART. (Van-Damme has been in a lot of tournament movies.)

But after a string of forgettable efforts co-starring such luminaries as Dennis Rodman (DOUBLE TEAM) Rob Schneider (KNOCK OFF), and himself (MAXIMUM RISK – see also DOUBLE IMPACT and REPLICANT), the bulging Belgian re-found that humility by playing himself in 2008’s JVCD. Half-way through the low-key heist movie, he delivers a sincere appraisal of his regrets and shortcomings both personal and professional by way of a six-minute, one-take monologue. Since then, there’s been THE EXPENDABLES 2, KUNG-FU PANDA 2, and I urge you to check out the bonkers UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING.

So, with the feeling that Van-Damme’s career might be on an upward curve again, I was fairly optimistic about THE LAST MERCENARY.

Encouraging sign number one: the self-deprecating humour is present and correct. Jean-Claude's introduced doing his signature splits between ceiling beams, bearded and in a beanie hat. As the still-active mercenary of the title, he’s on a rescue mission that has the tenor of a Gallic farce. Once the bad guys are defeated and the hostage released, our hero swan-dives out the window to the safety of a getaway truck. Shortly after, he relaxes by strutting his stuff in an up-market disco, doubtlessly in tribute to his infamous drunken dancing in KICKBOXER.

So, THE LAST MERCENARY turns out to be an action comedy. Each car chase is scored to an ’80s pop classic, from Blondie’s ‘One Way Or Another’ (actually from 1978, but indulge me), to a police chase through Paris in pursuit of a villain dressed as Tony Montana who blasts out ‘Scarface (Push It To The Limit)’. Now, as much as I love SCARFACE, this is the kind of lazy choice that is indicative of the level at which this movie is pitched. Why not try a little harder and have, say, the antagonist be obsessed with Wesley Snipes’ Nino Brown from NEW JACK CITY, who himself lionised the Brian De Palma classic in that movie?

Yes, THE LAST MERCENARY is as broad as an albatross’s wingspan; very French, but also very reminiscent of ’80s Hong Kong action movies: bug-eyed wacky tone, iffy dubbing and violence that’s more Jackie Chan than John Woo. Samir Decazza's performance as the imperilled son is especially cartoonish, with much hysterical screaming.

There’s a line of secret service intrigue where the film wants to be BURN AFTER READING, with government agents playing catch-up to the escalating hi-jinks – when they’re not standing around telling each other stories about JCVD being a living legend. Meanwhile, the man himself wears a succession of outfits and disguises, because funny, and, in one of those implausible look-how-old-this-guy-is touches that only ever happen in the movies, he reveals that he doesn't know how to fist-bump.

But, look. Van Damme kicks a sufficient number of asses and even gets to do some serious emoting, which should feel tonally out of place but in fact works because he’s just so damn sincere. THE LAST MERCENARY is amusing more often than it is annoying; it's fun and likable and wants to do nothing more than entertain you. And at that, it pretty much succeeds. Plus, I could never hate a film that ends on a freeze-framed tribute to 1994’s STREET FIGHTER.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Last of an ageing generation? More or less.

What would a movie called THE FIRST MERCENARY be about?  The film makes a number of cheeky references to JCVD’s back catalogue, so his first assignment would have to be reminiscent of his heel role in NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER.

 

Previously:  THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT

Next time:  LAST MAN DOWN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972, Wes Craven)

 * * * * * 

When a middle-class couple realise that the drifters they have let into their home are responsible for the rape and murder of their daughter, cheerful hospitality curdles into bloody revenge.

Starring  Sandra Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Martin Kove

Written by  Wes Craven

Produced by  Sean S Cunningham

Duration  84 minutes

Imagine for a moment that your name is Bonnie Broecker. It’s the mid ’60s and you’re married to Wesley Earl Craven, a respected humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology, New York.

Life is ticking along nicely; your husband has begun messing around making short films with a 16mm camera, but it’s just a hobby – he had a strict Catholic upbringing where movies were forbidden, so it’s probably just something he needs to get out of his system.

Then the man you call Wes starts to get more serious about this filmmaking business. He suddenly jacks in the academia and starts editing and making writing contributions to X-rated flicks – under a pseudonym, mercifully.

Things don’t quite work out between the two of you and sadly you’re divorced by the decade’s end. Then, one night in 1972, you’re walking past a movie theatre showing something called THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, directed by one Wes Craven. Curious to see what your ex’s cinematic ambitions have led to, you purchase a ticket.

Eighty-four minutes later the credits are rolling up and the rest of the audience has shuffled away, but you're still rooted to your seat with your mouth agape.

"Oh, Wes," you whisper. "What the fuck was that?"

There must also have been several of Craven’s ex-students who went to see LAST HOUSE, not to mention his sophomore effort, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and all the other horror hits and less-than-hits that followed. Did any of these youngsters equate these intense films with the bland teacher who used to hold court in the lecture hall droning on about philosophy and art history? Did any of them – let alone his ex-missus – think, "Oh yeah, this doesn’t surprise me, I always knew he had it in him"?

Just like David Lynch being a gawky former Eagle Scout and John Woo being a softly spoken pacifist, egghead Craven creating the kind of films he did is pretty baffling. But even if his move into exploitation is as unfathomable as the evil that lurks in society's underbelly, he certainly made an impact on horror cinema.

Craven actually changed the genre three times in three separate decades. The raw and uncompromising LAST HOUSE raised the bar for what true terror could be on screen; ten years later he breathed new life into tired slasher flicks by unleashing Freddy Kruger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and then in the ’90s he delivered the meta mega-hit SCREAM.

Viewed today, LAST HOUSE remains a truly gut-wrenching ordeal. The abuse meted out by the odious Krug and his gleeful band on the poor girls, whose only crime was venturing from their leafy suburb into the big city, is difficult to watch, with the "piss your pants" humiliation being especially not for the faint-hearted.

Yes, the film is inarguably amateurish and occasionally cheesy, with its bumbling cops (including a pre-KARATE KID Martin Kove), prolonged cake-decorating sequence and cheerful music. But the lurching tonal shifts make the scenes of stark violence and torture even more shocking, coming so abruptly and so relentlessly as to make the viewer feel that they themselves have been physically assaulted.

It's an important horror picture, of that there can be no doubt, but even if we had never ended up hearing of Professor Craven or Sean S Cunningham (producer here, later director of FRIDAY THE 13TH) again, LAST HOUSE would still stand on its own as a work of genuine power.

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  You don’t actually see the street clearly, so it's impossible to verify whether there were in fact no more houses on that side. But why would such a trusted educator lie to us?

What would a movie called THE FIRST HOUSE ON THE LEFT be about?  You could say it had already been done by way of Craven’s inspiration for LAST HOUSE, Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960), although since that film is set in 14th Century Sweden it was probably more of a wooden hut or something. Otherwise … well, maybe the couple who live in the first house turn out to be more of the forgive-and-forget type, resulting in a somewhat anticlimactic finale. 

Previously:  THE LAST LULLABY

Next time:  THE LAST MERCENARY

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST LULLABY (2008, Jeffrey Goodman)

 

* * 

A jaded hitman takes on One Last Job and ends up falling in love with his target.

Starring  Tom Sizemore, Sasha Alexander, Sprague Grayden, Randall Batinkoff, Bill Smitrovich  

Written by  Peter Biegen, Max Allan Collins   

Produced by  David Koplan

Duration  93 minutes

   

Tom Sizemore, RIP.

It’s only been two months since his passing, but I'm already getting the (dubious) privilege of honouring the late actor with a review of THE LAST LULLABY, one of the many low-budget flicks to which he was reduced after struggling during his peak years with crystal meth, heroin and Heidi Fleiss.

(Recommended reading: Sizemore’s perfectly titled autobiography, By Some Miracle, I Made It Out Of There.)

Sizemore will be missed; specifically by me for having the sleaziest screen presence in ’90s cinema. From his cameo as a rough-living undercover DEA agent in POINT BREAK, through NATURAL BORN KILLERS’ psychotic wannabe-rapist Jack Scagnetti, to double-crossing Ralph Fiennes while sporting a dirty blonde wig in STRANGE DAYS (possibly the sleaziest movie ever?), he owned that decade.

His career was genuinely legit there for a while. In TRUE ROMANCE, he stood out among all the standout actors in a great cop double act with Chris Penn (another gone too soon). He was fourth-billed in HEAT, behind only Pacino, De Niro and Kilmer. And for some reason, it deeply pleases me that between 1998 and 2001 he was in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, BLACK HAWK DOWN and PEARL HARBOUR.

But there was always that compelling sleaziness. The only actor comparable is James Woods: see THE GETAWAY, THE SPECIALIST, CASINO, etc., in fact all the way back to VIDEODROME. Sadly, the two of them never shared the screen. Think of the unrealised collaborations! Sizemore taking the Daniel Baldwin role in VAMPIRES; Woods playing Sizemore’s father in STRIKING DISTANCE, replacing Dennis Farina.

Or how about an original team-up? Let’s say they both play alcoholic cops investigating a serial killer who preys on strippers. 80% of the movie takes place in strip clubs, and each of our heroes gets romantically involved with a potential victim – maybe the same one, the lucky lady. Title: STRIP MAUL.

Anyway, THE LAST LULLABY. It may actually be the first time I've seen Sizemore as the lead (I don't count 1997's THE RELIC, that was Penelope Ann Miller's movie.) Why didn’t he get more of those opportunities in his heyday? Oh yeah, right, those recreational habits were probably an obstacle...

When we meet Sizemore, he's fidgety and drawn out; twitchy, like he’s coming off something. Hmm. He's mostly shot in static-camera close-ups to convey his inner turmoil, and also to avoid having to dress the set too much.

At first, we think he's a ‘nice’ assassin, rescuing a kidnapped girl from a bunch of vest-wearing rednecks in an abandoned barn. But he's only gate-crashing the hostage situation, subsequently asking her father for his own ransom. Then he decides he’s had enough of being a gun-for-hire and vows to hang up his Colt 1911 – until he gets another contract offer for more money than he can refuse.

Sizemore conducts himself through all this with the blunt, straightforward dignity of a triple-digit-IMDb-credits veteran. At one point, he goes swimming nude in a lake and you wonder if we’re going to find out whether he’s genuinely ‘sized-more’. But, alas. What we do learn is that with his world-weary minimalism, clipped delivery and prominent facial mole, he’s starting to resemble Bob De Niro, at around the age his HEAT co-star was during the making of Michael Mann's cop masterpiece.

Just as measured as Tom's performance is the film’s pace. I wouldn't quite call it boring, and there is enough story for 93 minutes, but it's definitely slow. The plot takes an early ‘six months later’ leap, which can be a danger sign, and the so-called ‘love’ Sizemore develops for his mark, Sasha Alexander, is more accurately his conscience catching up with him. But we don’t see much of this transition, therefore it feels a little unearned. It's in Sizemore’s eyes, but it’s not in the script, and so it’s only ever half-realised.

Overall, THE LAST LULLABY could have done with some offbeat Coens wit, or Cormac McCarthy philosophising, or Elmore Leonard banter. The movie starts off with some Soderbergh-esque titles, all-lower-case Courier New white on black, but that’s as close as it gets to indie quirkiness.

The real problem could be that I never stopped hoping for a taste of that good ol’ ’90s sleaze, sorely missing from this more mature Sizemore. And yes, I did start to wish that James Woods would turn up – he could easily have played the grizzled old dude who hires Tom to kill once again, although he would have needed some kind of nefarious ulterior motive. Necrophilia, perhaps.

It might be that I end up remembering late-period Sizemore more for his quickie TV roles on the likes of Cobra Kai and Twin Peaks. In lieu of trawling through his direct-to-streaming career in the vague hope of finding something stronger than THE LAST LULLABY, I’m OK with that.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The movie ends pretty abruptly, but I’m confident that the retirement is going to be permanent this time.

What would a movie called THE FIRST LULLABY be about?  ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ surely tops the list for most of us.

Previously:  THE LAST SUMMER

Next time:  THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com