LAST FLAG FLYING (2017, Richard Linklater)

 

* * * 

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

LAST VEGAS (2013, Jon Turteltaub)

 

* * * 

These guys might be old, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still party! Specifically, by heading to Vegas after the last bachelor among the group finally gets engaged.

Starring  Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen

Written by  Dan Fogelman

Produced by  Laurence Mark, Nathan Kahane, Amy Baer, Matt Leonetti   

Duration  105 minutes

   

Here we go: oldies doing youthful things movies. Did Clint Eastwood’s SPACE COWBOYS (2000) popularise the trend? Or was it Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas with TOUGH GUYS in 1986?

No, wait, there was GOING IN STYLE back in 1979 (also remade in 2017), which is part of the ‘pensioners pull a caper’ sub-genre – see also KING OF THIEVES, THE HATTON GARDEN JOB, THE LOVE PUNCH, GOLDEN YEARS, etc.

Whichever way you cut it, these films are comparatively rare; the older crowd isn’t traditionally catered to by Hollywood and its four-quadrant obsession. This despite the fact that pensioners go to the movies a lot – I know if I was retired, I'd be going two or three times a day. But the success of CALENDAR GIRLS and then those MARIGOLD HOTEL pictures seemed to make something click in studio boardrooms, and we were suddenly inundated with attempts to snag the ‘grey dollar’.

The trend was at its peak when LAST VEGAS came out in 2013, sandwiched as it was between the two MARIGOLD films. I’d need to have seen more of these things to accurately benchmark VEGAS against its peers but, judged on its own merits, it's serviceable enough.

Failing to act their age this time are Michael Douglas (69 at the time of filming), Robert De Niro (70), Morgan Freeman (76), and Kevin Kline ('the baby' at 66 – although none of them are as young as Mary Steenburgen's 60, so they still managed to keep the female love interest younger, as is par for the course).

The film opens by leaning heavily into nostalgia with a quick flashback. You got the kids cast for their resemblance to our stars, crammed into a photo booth for a montage of snaps over the credits. You got the four friends standing up for each other in the face of older greasers, soundtracked to ’50s pop. You got a glimpse of a rivalry between young De Niro and young Douglas.

Then: bam! Fast-forward fifty-eight years. Kline is taking part in water aerobics while quipping about how close to death everyone around him is. Freeman has an overprotective son, or it might have been grandson, that scene was kind of rushed. De Niro falls asleep in front of daytime TV and dodges his Millennial neighbour’s attempts to set him up with her grandmother. Michael Douglas is wildly successful, judging by his Malibu beachside home and bikini-clad 30-something partner (what a shocker: the evidently proud sex-addict Douglas is playing the lothario), and it is he for whom the Vegas stag do that gets the four back together is organised. 

The music starts to sound like David Holmes' score for OCEAN'S ELEVEN; the oldies struggle with their suitcases, their rented cars and navigating flights of stairs; De Niro kills five minutes of screentime in post-MEET THE PARENTS curmudgeon mode with his reluctance to join the party; and before you can say "Let's have another joke about old people living in Florida", we're in Vegas ( ... baby)!

In terms of an actual plot, beyond just stretching an amused-with-itself setup to feature length, only the abovementioned De Niro/Douglas tension really qualifies – and I'll give writer Dan Fogelman credit for not making it turn out to stem from the latter stealing the former’s girl, despite likely pressure from Douglas at the scripting phase. Kline spends the film trying to pick up younger women, having been given a free pass by his wife (until, inevitably his conscience intervenes), and Freeman cuts lose on the games of chance now that he is unshackled from his mollycoddling son/grandson.

Other than that, it's mostly a series of comic set pieces: the gang judging a bikini contest; that curly haired DJ bloke from LMFAO gyrating his crotch in Robert De Niro's face; the oldies blagging their way into VIP areas; dancing to EDM drunk on vodka Red Bulls; Turtle from Entourage being an asshole, then getting his comeuppance when the old guys pretend to be aged Mafia bosses on the warpath. You get the idea.

Best in show actually turns out to be Steenburgen, whose lounge singer/Vegas chaperone contributes a wry and charming energy, although Fogelman could have done with gifting her some dialogue that goes beyond reactionary one-liners.

It's the kind of film that was made for half-watching on a Sunday afternoon. It doesn't demand too much from the viewer, so it would be churlish to demand too much from it.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Everyone had a good time and successfully completed their story arcs, so that's probably it for trips to the gambling Nirvana in Navada.

What would a movie called FIRST VEGAS be about?  Obviously if you go back too far, it’s just a town in the middle of the desert. Probably better to think of the 1960s/70s, the era of Frank Sinatra or DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: plenty of gambling, but not yet full-on gaudiness.

Previously:  THE LAST SUPPER

Next time:  LAST FLAG FLYING

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST SUPPER (1995, Stacy Title)

 

* * * * 

A group of liberal grad students start inviting extreme right-wingers to dinner and murdering them after the inevitable clash of ideologies.

Starring  Cameron Diaz, Courtney B Vance, Ron Eldard, Jonathan Penner, Annabeth Gish, Bill Paxton

Written by  Dan Rosen

Produced by  Matt Cooper, Larry Weinberg   

Duration  92 minutes

Movies should be a balancing act between entertainment and art, with the nature of the picture determining in which direction the scales tip.

So where does politics fit in? Used sparingly and subtly, a bit of an agenda can add depth. Rian Johnson, for instance, is one mainstream filmmaker who sneaks rhetoric into their work. This enriched KNIVES OUT and gave an already excellent film more power, but came across as a little preachy in the sequel, GLASS ONION.

Going further back, DR STRANGELOVE is hilarious first and shines a light on Cold War hysteria second. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS alludes to Communist paranoia while still being surface-level chilling. On the other hand, LAND OF THE DEAD is a little too on-the-nose with its Dennis-Hopper-as-George-W-Bush ironic casting. And GET OUT is a pretty bog-standard piece of suspense horror, one that would practically disappear if you took away its subtexts (director Jordan Peele himself instead calls it a ‘social thriller’.)

However, THE LAST SUPPER is a different beast altogether. This film isn't trying to sneak you some politics through the backdoor; the politics are the movie.

LAST SUPPER’S concept is novel, but does have precedents – it’s in the tradition of ‘lefties turn to righty tactics when pushed too far’. A lot of vigilante stuff falls into this trope, with the Jodie Foster-starring THE BRAVE ONE a recent example. But the forefather is, believe it or not, the first DEATH WISH. Early on, Charles Bronson actually says, "My heart bleeds a little for the underprivileged". Then when a couple of scenes later some of those underprivileged attack his family, he decides that he’d prefer to make their hearts bleed ... from bullet wounds!

The liberal fightback in LAST SUPPER kicks off when Bill Paxton’s truck driver gives one of the house-sharing grad students a lift home, following car trouble. They reward him with a meal and he turns out to be an aggressively racist Desert Storm-veteran, whose idea of dinner table conversion is like a checklist of the deplorable: "Everyone hates the Jews", "The Nazis had the right idea" and "My granddaddy said if he’d known them slaves were gonna be so much trouble, we’d have picked the cotton ourselves!" For pudding, he gets a knife to the spine.

Having got away with one murder, the housemates decide that from now on they’ll have a guest round for "lunch and discussion" once a week. Spoiler: they don't invite any wallflowers.

Instead, it’s more like anti-abortionists; Nation of Islam fundamentalists; Charles Durning’s Old Testament vicar ("Homosexuality is the disease and Aids is the cure"); Mark Harmon’s chauvinist rape-apologist ("How often does a woman say no when she really means yes?"); an anti-environmentalist played by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander with a goofy Southern accent; and more, poisoning one and all with arsenic-spiked dessert wine. Meanwhile, the unmarked graves in the tomato patch start to line up like morbid speed bumps.

Having Paxton play the first kill as someone who might as well have horns and a pointy tail seems blandly manipulative at first glance, but is actually a shrewd move. By making the first victim so cartoonishly hateable, LAST SUPPER lures the audience into siding with the protagonists right away. We fall into the trap of seeing things in black and white as they at first do, which makes it all the easier to share in their unease as shades of grey get mixed in.

Despite how it might sound, this is not a dogmatic film; it goes about its business with a clear head and a welcome lack of partisanship. This means it can smoothly and intelligently explore its core ‘what if’: many an impassioned left-instigated debate has felt like it could erupt into violence, so how about escalating to homicide?

And the movie has other things on its mind, too, such as: do the left debate too much instead of acting? If they were as proactive as the right, maybe the world would be less fucked up and they really could ‘make a difference’ for once. In fact, could the only way to really make that elusive ‘difference’ be to eliminate the negative people – the classic would-you-kill-baby-Hitler? debate.

The grads tell each other that they want to give their guests the chance to change their views and avoid becoming tomato fertiliser, but an emerging murkiness about whether the intention is really to educate or if it’s to punish is just one cause of tension among the gang. Then the net starts to close in by way of Nora Dunn’s sheriff investigating an unrelated crime involving one of the last supper victims, and the cracks among the moralistic murderers begin widening into chasms.

Cameron Diaz now stands out as the ‘name’ in the cast, but she was unknown at the time (THE MASK had only just been released) and is part of a genuine ensemble, with every character well-drawn and compellingly portrayed. It all plays out in ways that are at once surprising, logical and satisfying, making it a real pity that director Stacy Title and screenwriter Dan Rosen aren't better known.

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The title is pretty much perfect for where the film’s at: it’s got death, it’s got judgement, but it’s also wryly self-aware.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SUPPER be about? Probably pretty unappetising. Some brambles and such, I’m guessing.

Previously:  THE LAST SEDUCTION

Next time:  LAST VEGAS

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST SEDUCTION (1994, John Dahl)

 * * * * 

She’s a woman in a man’s world – and in his pants, and in his wallet. Whatever it takes to get her hands on nearly a million dollars.

Starring  Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman, JT Walsh, Bill Nunn

Written by  Steve Barancik

Produced by  Jonathan Shestack   

Duration  110 minutes   

Bill Pullman had terrible luck onscreen with women in the ’90s. SOMMERSBY, MALICE, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE – he doesn’t get the girl in any of them. As if people getting him mixed up with Bill Paxton all the time wasn’t bad enough! Even though that's plainly preposterous (unlike Dermott Mulroney and Dylan McDermott or Kim Coates and Elias Koteas; now, those I can understand.)

THE LAST SEDUCTION was part of Pullman’s luckless streak of cinematic romance, but it isn’t actually his movie. His character's merely one of the men spun into the web weaved by his wife Bridget (Linda Fiorentino), in his case when she pinches the $700,000 he made selling pharmaceutical cocaine and does a runner from their New York apartment. 

Unlike the Pullman/Paxton phenomenon, Fiorentino definitely wasn't getting mistaken for anyone else. With LAST SEDUCTION, she carved a distinct place on the list of classic femme fatales, among Ava Gardner in THE KILLERS, Barbara Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Sharon Stone in BASIC INSTINCT and Kathleen Turner in BODY HEAT – although come to think of it, Fiorentino does sound a bit like the throaty-voiced Turner.

But her Bridget is a true one-off, a whip-smart and resourceful force of nature who gets what she wants, always looks out for number one, and makes sure she has a damn good time along the way.

Peter Berg – just before veering from acting to directing with VERY BAD THINGS, followed by a succession of tepid Mark Wahlberg projects – plays the needy feminine role here. He's Mike, a local from the small town in which our heroine hides out while the heat dies down back in NYC. At first Mike's just a fuck buddy, but Bridget quickly pegs him as more useful as a patsy for a new scheme she’s brewing up.

It's sometimes said that movies need to have sympathetic characters in order to work. Do they bollocks! It’s asinine to criticise a picture for expecting you to side with someone less than angelic; a bland lament trotted out by people unable to process that you can relate to a flawed person while not approving of their behaviour.

In LAST SEDUCTION, Bridget lies, steals, blackmails, curses like Jack Nicholson in THE LAST DETAIL, uses people, has zero empathy ... and we want her to succeed. Why? Because she’s determined and resourceful, she’s quick-witted and smart and she doesn’t take shit from anyone. Most of us are meek and listless in our everyday lives; we respect someone who ruthlessly pursues their goals, even if we don’t like what those goals are.

And hey, guess what – it’s fiction we’re talking about here! Newsflash: we all have less than pure impulses and the realm of fantasy is a harmless place to indulge them, whether that’s just in our own minds or during a couple of hours spent watching a movie. Better like that than actually acting on them.

THE LAST SEDUCTION does still hedge its bets, but rather cleverly. Pullman's character impulsively hits Bridget in the opening scene, framing all her subsequent betrayals as stemming from domestic abuse. So in the viewer’s eyes, not to mention her own, she's the wronged one and spends the movie fighting back. Plus it helps that Pullman forgoes his usual nice guy routine to play the kind of sleazebag Tom Sizemore would have been proud of.

Fiorentino is formidable as Bridget, who remains pleasingly unrepentant until the bitter end. Director John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN, RED ROCK WEST) adds another solid neo-noir to his resume, and we all get to enjoy some time on the wrong side of the tracks, before crossing safely back over to our straight-arrow lives, where we all live like flawless saints.

And for the record, Bill Pullman has been happily married since 1987, has three children, and did in fact get a happy romantic ending in 1995's WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING. So, there's hope for all of us. 

Four stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As Bridget drives away scot-free at the end, it seems highly doubtful that she won’t be using her powers of seduction again on the next hapless male who either gets in the way of what she wants or who can be manipulated into helping her acquire it.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SEDUCTION be about?  Maybe it’s about time we had a Bridget Gregory origin story?

 

Previously:  THE LAST DETAIL

Next time:  THE LAST SUPPER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST DETAIL (1973, Hal Ashby)

 * * * * * 

A couple of sailors make sure that a youthful recruit has a good time on his way to prison.

Starring  Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Carol Kane

Written by  Robert Towne

Produced by  Gerald Ayres

Duration  104 minutes

You will read within the pages of this blog its author banging on about how much he loves the 1980s. But even someone blinkered with nostalgia for the era in which they grew up must accept that the best decade for film was probably the ’70s. (There are counter arguments, of course, but bear in mind that this opinion comes from a place of hating musicals and having a limited tolerance for westerns.)

I mean, let's take a look at the Oscar Best Picture nominees from the year THE LAST DETAIL came out, 1973, as well as some from those either side, 1972 and 1974. They include THE GODFATHER, DELIVERENCE, THE STING, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE EXORCIST, THE GODFATHER PART II, CHINATOWN, and THE CONVERSATION.

You can’t tell me the motion pictures of today match that lot, both in quality and the sheer consistency of that quality. THE LAST DETAIL didn't even get nominated for Best Picture, and it’s a Goddamn masterpiece!

There are many elements that make LAST DETAIL great. Lead star Jack Nicholson comes as no surprise. Writer Robert Towne (CHINATOWN, sadly no longer with us as of this week) also isn't a shock. Director Hal Ashby (HAROLD AND MAUDE) is a given. But to me, the revelation in films like this and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is Randy Randall Rudy Quaid. (Yes, that's his full given name.)

I was first introduced to Quaid as boorish Cousin Eddie in the NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION series, especially the annually televised Christmas instalment. Then later in the cinema, as INDEPENDENCE DAY's crazed alien abductee pilot, who gets his revenge on his former captors by going kamikaze ("Hello, boys! I'm baaaaaack!"), or as a goofy Amish bowler in the underrated comedy KINGPIN. And while younger brother Dennis became a conventionally handsome B-list leading man who married Meg Ryan, Randy squandered his talent and slid toward TV movies, eventually becoming more notorious for personal scandals than anything he did on screen.

But in THE LAST DETAIL, a fresh-faced and slim 22-year-old Quaid delivers an Oscar-nominated supporting performance (he lost the statue to someone called John Houseman for something called THE PAPER CHASE). 

Sailors Nicholson and Otis Young are the leads: hard-drinking, self-serving veterans, wary of being given a "shit detail" and adamant that any authority figure should "go fuck themselves". Such a detail does indeed come their way in the shape of escorting Quaid from their Virginia base to Portsmouth Naval Prison for attempting to steal 40 dollars from a superior officer (and not even succeeding), which because of political bullshit is enough to earn him an inflated eight-year sentence. 

The injustice of it all bothers even these most cynical of career sailors, and their brothers-in-arms compulsion to "do right by" the hapless and helpless greenhorn is comedic, full of righteous indignation and finally downright heart-warming.

The trio don't follow a straight line to the Naval prison, instead taking detours to the cities of Washington and Boston. They visit bars; seedy hotels; diners where they'll melt the cheese on your burger if you ask them to; parks for some al fresco-roasted hotdogs; meetings of chanting Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists; pornographic bookstores; pawnshops; ice rinks; groovy after-hours coffee joints; Nixon-bashing, joint-passing house parties (featuring a debuting Nancy Allen, looking even younger than Quaid); and brothels (where the girls look younger still than Allen).

Across these evenings of misadventure, the loose, easy-going naturalistic vibe that typified Ashby’s best work (BEING THERE, the abovementioned HAROLD AND MAUD) sucks you in and never lets go. These are real people, authentic, simply men being men together – with all that entails, for good and for ill.

Cousin Eddie would be proud.

And I’ll resist the urge to close with some snarky speculation about what such a product of the ’70s would look like if done today –  because director Richard Linklater (BEFORE SUNRISE, DAZED AND CONFUSED) actually tried such a thing in 2017. Helpfully for this blog, he even kept a ‘last’ in the title -- so watch this space for a review of LAST FLAG FLYING, coming your way real soon, sailor …

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  With regards to their Naval careers, Nicholson and Young describe themselves as "a couple of lifers", so further details are definitely on their horizon.

What would a movie called THE FIRST DETAIL be about?  The one I usually notice is the eyes, although of course I can’t speak for everyone.

Previously:  THE LAST HARD MEN

Next time:  THE LAST SEDUCTION

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HARD MEN (1976, Andrew V McLaglen)

 

* * * 

The retired lawman who put away a violent criminal must again track him down when he escapes.

Starring  Charlton Heston, James Coburn, Barbara Hershey, Jorge Rivero, Michael Parks, Larry Wilcox

Written by  Guerdon Trueblood   

Produced by  Walter Seltzer, Russell Thacher   

Duration  98 minutes   

 

What are the great cinematic face offs? What about FACE/OFF itself? Nicholas Cage and John Travlota: the battle of the scenery-chewers. That turned out pretty good.

Still, there were plenty of missed opportunities. The obvious one was Arnie vs Sly, but Van Damme vs Seagal would also have worked; ditto Bruce Willis vs Mel Gibson. But if I had to choose, I’d’ve gone for Danny DeVito facing off against Bob Hoskins. Short and bald vs bald and short.

Alright, fine, but THE LAST HARD MEN is a western. Well, there have been plenty of one-on ones in that territory. My limited knowledge of the genre means that I’m not about to trawl through IMDb to come up with multiple examples; let’s just mention Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in the 3:10 TO YUMA remake (2007) and Pierce Brosnon and Liam Nesson in SERAPHIM FALLS (2006) and be done with it.

And so that brings us to Charlton Heston vs James Coburn. Pitting them against each other? Sure, makes sense. Couple of rugged stars with genre bona fides. OK, sure, but this movie makes a pretty bold claim. What could have inspired their casting not just as men, but as hard men – and the final ones, no less?

Let’s see, then. First of all, is there anything in the pair’s private lives to suggest they were hard, and is it clear which of them was, indeed, the hardest?

Well, they were both in the army. But while Charlton served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 bomber, probably wincing from the sounds of planes blowing up all round him while risking his own skin, James had a more low-key time of it: he was a truck driver and a DJ on an Army radio station in Texas. Hardly life-threatening.

On the other hand, Coburn was a close friend of Bruce Lee’s and learnt Jeet Kune Do from the master. Heston doesn’t appear to have got any comparable training; the closest comparison is his stint as the president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 until 2003, which is far less impressive.

So, honours even so far. How about their experiences on screen, prior to this film?

Well, blimey. Heston was only bloody Moses, in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)! You don't go about parting the red sea without some moxy. He’s no slouch in his other most famous Biblical epic BEN-HUR (1959), either. And in PLANET OF THE APES (1968), he delivers the classic "Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" to his primate captors – on their planet! (Except – spoiler alert – it’s actually not.)

Coburn obviously can’t beat his rival for iconic manly roles. But still, he was one of only three who managed to actually escape in THE GREAT EACAPE (1963); he played a smooth Bondian spy in OUR MAN FLINT (1966 and a sequel the following year); and he was the one blowing everything up in Sergio Leone’s A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE (1971).

Hmm. So it’s actually rather hard to choose from the two when it comes to being hard.

What about during THE LAST HARD MEN itself? Well, the younger actor at first has the edge. Coburn enters as part of a chain gang out in the desert, laying railway tracks. He grabs the guard’s shotgun and blasts him in the chest; now left unsupervised (one guard?), he goes about setting everyone loose.

"What I think up here," he tells his accomplices while tapping his forehead, "I’m two or three minutes ahead of you. And that’s what counts." So, he's a hard thinker, too.

The getaway includes hanging onto the bottom of a moving train and later stabbing a disloyal accomplice in the back, right after showering the man with compliments. Brutal.

And the whole escaping thing was just so he could get his revenge on Heston’s character, which he does by kidnapping the man’s nubile daughter (Barbara Hershey) and holding her hostage with his predatory gang out in the hills, in a bid to lure his foe into an ambush.

Heston, meanwhile, is not immediately promising. He’s a retired captain who sports an impressive moustache and mutton-chops combo, so that’s a plus, but he also lets the sheriff, a baby-faced Michael Parks (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL), smartmouth him.

But he soon snaps back into form and shows everyone who’s really the boss when Coburn re-enters the scene. Charlton’s the man who sent our James down, you see, and he wants to repeat the trick. "I ain't dead, I'm retired," he growls.

Turns out his is more of a simmering rage, kept dormant for a while and now about to erupt. And so, battle commences.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the right side of the law prevails. But does that mean Heston was truly harder? I have to say, just about. He gets shot like six times by Coburn before flinging his  adversary off a cliff, and yet seems to survive. So, let’s say it’s a win on points.

Still, in the annals of cinema, Coburn did come back 20 years later with one of the hardest characters ever: Nick Nolte's abusive, alcoholic father in 1997’s AFFLICTION. Put him against the Heston character in THE LAST HARD MEN and I think the outcome would have been very different.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Not really – many more hardman actors were still to come. Heck, even in 1976, there was plenty of work going for Clint Eastwood, Robert Mitchum (whose son Christopher is in this film), Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen …

What would a movie called THE FIRST HARD MEN be about?  Well, Louis Cyr, a Canadian bodybuilder who died in 1912, was known to be ‘the strongest man who ever lived’. You certainly wouldn’t accuse someone like that of being a big softie. (And he presumably had plenty of hard mates, too.)

Previously:  LAST PASSENGER

Next time:  THE LAST DETAIL

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

LAST PASSENGER (2013, Omid Nooshin)

 

* * * 

These commuters have more than leaves on the line to worry about – the train’s out of control, the driver’s uncontactable and they’re not slowing down.

Starring  Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg, David Schofield, Lindsay Duncan

Written by  Omid Nooshin, Andrew Love, Kas Graham

Produced by  Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto, Zack Winfield 

Duration  93 minutes 

I don’t think about LAST PASSENGER star Dougray Scott very often. When I do, it’s usually on one of two occasions. 

One is that TWIN TOWN is on TV, where he plays a Glasgow Rangers top-wearing total bastard corrupt cop, who clashes with Rhys Ifans (in his breakout role) and his brother.

The other occasion that prompts me to think about Dougray Scott is when there is mention of famous casting decisions that never were. Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones. Nicolas Cage as Superman. Sean Connery as Gandalf. All of those meant that the actor missed out on increased fame or a huge payday, or both.

But none are as notorious as Dougray Scott's near-miss: Wolverine. 

He had the role in 2000's X-MEN movie, but reshoots on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 meant that he couldn’t commit. Talk about life-changing – just compare his and Hugh Jackman’s career trajectories from that point onwards.

And so here we are 13 years later, with Dougray finding himself starring in little-known but pretty decent low-budget British thriller LAST PASSENGER. (For context, Hugh was about to make his seventh appearance as the retractable-clawed superhero.)

The first thing one notices when watching this movie is that the locomotive looks well out of date for 2013. I’ve long suspected that there's a decommissioned fleet of last generation London trains (and buses) that are kept in a depot somewhere for filmmakers to use. I mean, the ones here still have doors you can open between stations and windows that go all the way down! Those went out in the late ’80s, around the time that seat belts in cars became mandatory.

Anyway, Scott is on one such train this particular evening heading out of the capital (to Glasgow? Would be a long trip, but he is using his native accent), with his seven-year-old son in tow. My initial expectation that the anachronistic train was due to the story being set 30 years ago was dashed when he gets a call on his mobile: he has ‘Deck the Halls’ as his ringtone, so we must be approaching Christmas. The numerous piss-heads jumping about on the seats implied as much, but then again that could be any night on a British train journey. And the script shoehorns into his phone conversation that Scott’s character is a doctor, so you know someone’s going to need medical attention down the line.

Kara Tointon, at that point not long off soap opera Eastenders, is the flirtatious young woman he meets in his carriage. She has an appealing presence and could easily occupy the place Lily James currently holds in our lives, or play her sister or something. Anyway, Scott starts to notice suspicious things, both inside and outside the train, and she’s the only one who believes him. Soon, they realise they’re among only half a dozen passengers left – and they might not be making their final destination. Let’s just say that those fully operational doors and windows are going to be needed as the remaining passengers explore the speeding train inside and out, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks ‘train-set thriller’ is THE LADY VANISHES (1938). That’s not only one of the great confided-space suspense yarns, but one of Hitchcock’s very best from his post-sound, still-British period. We’re not expecting that, of course, but LAST PASSENGER is still a solid little flick. 

And while it also can’t compete with existential masterpiece RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985) or the original THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974), it’s definitely better than weak slasher TERROR TRAIN (1980) or the overrated pair of SNOWPIERCER (2013) and BULLET TRAIN (2022) – the latter of which being one of the worst films I have seen in a long time.

I’d put LAST PASSENGER on par with Steven Seagal’s UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY (1995) and South Korean zombie horror TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016). In other words:

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As I said in the review, Scott teams up with a handful of other misfits and it’s no spoiler to say that they don’t all die. So, pluralising here would have been more accurate.

What would a movie called FIRST PASSENGER be about?  Someone who got up extremely early to catch the train, just so they can get their favourite window seat.

Previously:  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

Next time:  THE LAST HARD MEN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com