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LAST FLAG FLYING
***
Dir: Richard Linklater
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Steve Carrell, Laurence Fishburne
(15, 2hr 4 mins)
A curiously inert drama from the maker of Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s latest is a cousin of sorts to Hal Ashby’s 1973 film The Last Detail, as three former US servicemen reunite and mull over their pasts.
However, where The Last Detail had Jack Nicholson at its head bursting with caustic foul-mouthed bite and anger, Last Flag Standing is a far more muted, meditative film. Steve Carrell plays Mac, whose son has been killed overseas whilst serving for the US Marines. He tracks down old friends and fellow former Marines Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston. Cranston runs a bar and sarcastically rails at the world, whilst Fishburne has become a pastor. They’ve not seen each other since their time in Vietnam, fighting an entirely senseless war.
There, they bonded irrevocably, and Carrell wants the three of them to bury his son together, who had also been fighting a war that made little sense. The three of them subsequently embark on a road trip to pick up the body, before going AWOL with it in an act of defiance. Carrell doesn’t want his son buried in a military cemetery but at home. As they travel they reminisce, argue and muse on the state of the world, even buying themselves mobile phones (it’s set in the early noughties), trying to discover where their place in the world is these days.
It should crackle along but despite the best efforts of all involved, it feels a little forced. There are moments of comedy and moving melancholy, but it turns into mawkish melodrama. Cranston showboats as the most maverick of the trio, but Carrell’s quiet resilience impresses. It should be more involving than it actually is, remaining slightly disconnected and uninvolving. There appears to be a better film in here about masculinity and service to one’s country regardless of disagreements with where the effects of political machinations take you, but it’s muddied and inconsequential. Points are made then discarded in the shaggy-dog script. As a snapshot of humanity akin to Linklater’s excellent Before… trilogy, it occasionally succeeds, but mostly this flag remains sluggishly at half-mast.
Words KEIRON SELF
Last Flag Flying is out in cinemas now.