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Last Orders Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 15 Reviews)

Closing Time
Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of Graham Swift's brisk novel about death and Britishness, or the death of Britishness, is a textbook case of how a bad script can stymie a brilliant cast.

The screen comes alive whenever Michael Caine's on it, even when he's in a hospital bed. But he's never on for more than a few minutes before a flashback sweeps you back to his disturbing younger double, or shifts to one of his four mates, all of whom have stories and flashbacks of their own that need to be crammed in. Despite all the cuts, the snippets themselves are amazingly static for a film--four men driving in a car, four men standing at a pub, a man and a woman sitting on a bench: that's about 80% of the screen time right there.

The characters seemed representative rather than real personalities: East Enders who fight in the War, bet on horses, run family butcher shops, go hopping of a summer, and mark their major life events down the local felt too pat, too pasteboard, to interest even the actors. London appears through a warm gauze of color and memory that doesn't really do justice to the personal histories the film sets out to tell. The cast is a Who's Who of the last 40 years of British cinema--I wish they'd been given more room to stretch out and pour their own histories into the characters.


Last rites?
Viewers should beware of films which use flashbacks spanning so many years that two (or more) separate casts are required to portray one set of characters. This film is no exception. The actor representing the Michael Caine character (30 or so years earlier) was the only moderately credible such casting, there being a strong physical resemblance; though Field could also have played a similar role for Peter O'Toole. But disparities of the younger representations of Bob Hoskins (Anatol Yusef), Helen Mirren (Kelly Reilly), and several others were so severe that their initial appearances imparted a "Who-are-these-clowns-anyway?" air to the proceedings, until one finally makes the connection about an hour later.

Add the unremitting cockney accents in which this reviewer found it impossible to understand more than half of the dialogue (the remaining half requiring the utmost concentration); the incessant, minute-to-minute flipping back and forth between three different timeframes (present, near-present, and distant past); and that the entire film is basically a set of anecdotal reminiscences; and the film degenerates into a mish-mash of incoherence.

Not recommended.


A small gem
An unassuming and unpretentious British movie about beer drinking mates who set on the last journey bringing one of their own to his last resting place. That deceased mate came in the form of Michael Caine. As the son of the deceased (or was he?) played splendidly by Ray Winstone, he drove all of them to the seaside called Margate but not before he took a few detour to various locations that stirred up "ghosts" of the past. The movie came in the reminiscence format and as a good slow movie would gradually unfolded itself, it left us with clues which got audience begging for more. In the end, the little clues became the total sum of the movie. It seemed that amid the peace and tranquility on the surface, there always seemed to be some "dirty laundry" or secrets that probably should remain as they were. As best of mates, whilst some saw what they didn't mean to see, they were non-judgmental and took their friends as who they were. A movie that would linger in your mind after you watched it and a movie that would have you reflected upon your relationships with your friends and family members. Quite poignant but a fair reflection of reality. Highly recommended. No extra features in DVD other than subtitles selections

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