The Last Man

The best thing I can say about it is that it tries to be. Not "good", but "something". The film essentially meanders between apocalyptic sci-fi, noir (à la Mute), some kind of parable about climate change and traces of post-Vietnam war movies (PTSD). It just doesn't do too well in any of those fronts, choosing instead to bury down in itself with the promise of meaning. If you hate voice over, or simply think that it is a poor substitute for good storytelling (or storyshowing), and a crutch for emotional exposition, just stay aeay from this dissapointing film.

No, not even if you are a Harvey Keitel fan, or like the genre. It will not add much to your life.

One of my most anticipated films of 2019 is sadly a dud. The film starts off with modern U.S Marines wearing World War II helmets and that really sets the tone for the rest of the film.

World building is exceptionally vague with hardly anything explained and character development is pathetically rushed and paper thin. Even with extensive voiceover, I could barely tell you what the plot of this film even was, when it took place or why the characters act the way they do. Worse still, I didn't care too. It feels less like a film than it does a collection of poorly strung together scenes tied around Hayden Christensen's impressively acted, but narratively useless, voiceover. I was getting Slender Man (2018) flashbacks watching this at points and that's not a good thing. You can really tell how much of a nightmare this was to make and large portions of the movie just seem straight out missing. Often times, characters will shift behavior and personality seemingly between scenes. Hayden's Tove begins the film as a physically vulnerable, washed up bum and then becomes a cold, efficient, martial arts mastering badass a scene later. Occasional exposition will be thrown in to give us at least a bit of context, but hardly anything that makes this any easier to follow or any more compelling from a story standpoint.

It's a shame, because there's a lot to like here underneath all the incompetence. Hayden Christensen's performance is genuinely award worthy, probably his best since Shattered Glass. I was shocked by the range of his vocal delivery, it's easily the most he's ever showcased, and his facial acting is equally nuanced. It's one of those performances like Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady or Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar, where his acting clearly belonged in a far better movie.

Harvey Keitel isn't half bad either. He's at a stage in his career where acting is pretty much optional for him, but he genuinely seems to be trying here. He believes in this film and he believes in this character and he definitely commands the charisma and presence of a "dark messiah"-esque character.

The overall aesthetic of the film is excellent as well. The visual direction (mostly) looks better than most theatrical wide releases, really capturing the dark, Gothic feel of a Gotham City or Blade Runner-style LA. The musical score is one of my favorites in recent memory as well, evoking a very moody, ominous and intense tone.

Overall, The Last Man is a mess. It has plenty of positive elements, but they can't fix a broken and confused (If not outright incoherent) story and character development. It's worth a onetime watch just to appreciate Rodrigo H. Vila's inspired direction and the excellent lead performances, but it's not worth much else. I was frustrated with The Last Man and ultimately let down by it.

This has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen- The reviewers giving this a 2,3 or 4 are being far to generous as this is one of those movies that you look at the time every 5 minutes to see when it will be over and wondering when it will get better; hint: It never does it actually gets worse the longer the movie meanders on!

It is as though they took a Spanish translator who was not to good at his job at translating the script and made a movie from his mumblings as hardly any of the movie makes any sense whatsoever. I only realised this might have been some sort of Spanish collaboration when the three main security guys who all looked the same, spoke the same and had the usual Spanish beards but equally awful acting ability made a nod at perhaps these were all relatives of the Director or writer.

Then we throw in a pretty girl for no reason whatsoever and with the usual mysterious Eastern European accent to try and fool the viewers that this was going to be some exotic femme-fatal - Fatal is the word but not in the good way as her accent could not disguise her atrocious acting ability and prancing around in her first scene like a model when the movie had started in what looked like a post apocalyptic ghetto with people living in rags cmon. Then we have...hold on while i Yaaaawnnnn... Neo Nazi good old trope but in this case bad old trope and the most wimpy and weak characters that would not scare the skin off a custard - oh my goodness you have to watch their scenes to see how awful this movie really is.

I could go on for hours describing why this was so bad as virtual;ly every second presentedus with something absurd, awful, terrible...from the very first opening scene which another viewer mentioned American soldiers wearing WWII helmets then fast forwarding so some eastern european looking concrete jungle then throwing in some awful guy with a Manchester accent in another improbable scene complaining about a homeless guy outside his home when the whole city was in ruin - really??? Even in the security agency little things that i would otherwise ignore made me wonder like the computer monitor which was CRT and not a flat screen and this is supposed to be set in the future; its as if the directors tried to just do everything on the cheap. What am I watching were my thoughts as minute crawled by minute of cringeworthy acting and awful disconnected dialogue and scenes - notably the one in the insane asylum and the overacting black guy in the cage - what was all that about??? Answers on a postcard please! The funniest scene was Haydn taking out the Nazis with a pistol and some night vision goggles on when it was not dark enough to need them lol I fell off the chair and my tv exploded in utter frustration at that point.

The director and writer of this calamity should never be allowed to make another movie, rarely do I see such a disaster in nearly every area from acting ability, special effects, dialogue, story, camerawork - it truly is awful. Then we have Haydn doing some sort of nonsensical Apocalypse Now voice over with what sounds like a sore throat or some vo-coded nonsense to make him sound manly and James Earl Jones'ish - That was when I started laughing; just before I started crying when the female non-actress started mincing around and talking complete gibberish.

The question I want answered is what are actors like Harvey Keitel and Haydn Christensen doing in this? I would have thought the Direct Line insurance ads would be making enough money for Harvey than to appear in this turgid bore-fest and set his career into the nosedive that has affected so many other greats like Nic Cage, John Cusack, Clancy Brown,Ron Perlman et al Surely they read the script before accepting the role or is it as I would surmise saw the pay packet and just grabbed without looking.

What really puts the cherry on top of this turdcake (I can find no other polite expression to call this nonsense) is the Harvey Keitel final voice-over giving some utterly pointless and nonsensical apologue and to make matters worse a final end mid credits scene of Haydn and the girl in the cellar (For no apparent reason whatsoever than to copy the current trend).

I very rarely give a movie 1/10 but this truly is one of the worst movies I have seen this year and rates alongside The Bad Batch as a complete and utter waste of money and the viewers time - I do genuinely feel I have been cheated out of two hours of my life having to endure this cinematic aural and visual torture but due to my movie watching OCD i have to give every film a fair go and watch it to the end but this did push my envelope and i nearly did switch it off - Wish I had now, you have been warned - Only watch this if you want to see how not to make a movie in every conceivable way!

A hobby of mine is to check out the reviews of really bad movies and to expose the astro-turfed reviews. Every single person that reviewed this movie favorably has only one review on IMDB. A pox on whoever is paying these people!

The other thing I want to ask is: Why, Harvey, Why?!?

I've noticed that some who review here vote based upon their "loyalties" to certain actors, genre, or other specifics or topics within the movie. For example, I like Harvey Keitel, but I'm not going to automatically give a movie like this a fake rating because of that. Or the fact that I tend to enjoy Sci-Fi, but again, simply because it happens to qualify under that category I cannot pretend this movie was something it is not. This movie proves both: Great actors can star in bad movies, and certain topics we all "wish" worked out can fail miserably. I really wish more people would start rating based upon reality - and put their loyalties aside.