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Last Orders
**
Cinema Releases - January 18, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 108
minutes. Written and directed by Fred Schepisi; from the novel by Graham
Swift. Starring Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins,
Helen Mirren, Ray Winstone.
"Last Orders" lets us know of past
romances, sins and choices, of loyalty between friends and relatives. It
looks back on life and sees the pain, struggles, disappointments and wrong
turns, as well as the moments of warmth, truth and laughter. It should be
interesting, it should be poignant, it turns out to be affected and
boring.
The movie stars Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay, David
Hemmings and Ray Winstone as friends and relatives of a character played
in flashbacks by Michael Caine. The men are following Caine's dying request,
and taking his ashes to the simple seaside place in Margate where he was
planning to move after retirement.
As the guys drive to Margate, they chat, joke
and reminisce, and in their heads reflect on key events in their lives. We
see their thoughts in flashback, and get a clearer picture of what formed
their personalities -- experiences in war, experiences in marriage, career
choices, secrets, the rest.
Maybe this worked in Graham Swift's novel. I've
only read it in bits, so I can't be sure. But the film is flat -- Fred Schepisi
is a great director, but his style is documentary, with the camera standing
back, viewing lives and behaviour but not submerging in them. I wanted to
connect with the material but the filmmaking is too detached to involve us;
long passages of dialogue feel like theatrical speeches, and many of the
flashbacks, especially in the first half of the picture, feel systematic
or redundant, coming out of nowhere or showing us things that we already
know from the dialogue.
Maybe "Last Orders" would have been better if
the texture had been more convincing. The period re-creation, for example,
is tacky and haphazard -- a few pieces of old furniture under soft focus
do not conjure times past, and I even noticed a poster from 1997 in a scene
that was supposed to be taking place in the 60s. The present-day scenes feature
an okay rapport between the guys in the cast, and movies like this always
grow on us as they progress, but "Last Orders" is a movie about life that
doesn't come alive enough to work.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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