The Last Beyond (2019) User Reviews

"I know a bear who once was a man."

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 20 November 2020]

This views almost like a B Western from the Thirties and Forties in as much as it takes place in Montana in 1933 and follows a classic good guy/bad guy formula. The DVD cover calls it a 'Masterpiece of Film' but I'd lay odds you won't feel about it the same way if you give it a look. The story line teams a rancher who loses his farm during the Depression, and subsequently teams up with a Native American and his grandfather to make moonshine whiskey and soda pop in a mountain hideaway. Later they're joined by a woman (Jolene Andersen) who becomes romantically involved with Stratton Eiseley (Chris Snyder), sharing stories from their past and an Indian legend from antiquity. It's generally a straightforward story until the confrontation that's destined to occur against the redneck sheriff (H. Ray Huff) and his deputies, accompanied by the jilted husband (Mark Overholt). In what seemed like a muddled showdown, the main protagonist Eiseley is gunned down after a wandering bear converges on the parties involved, leaving the sheriff, one of the deputies and the bear all dead. Without accounting for the remaining deputy or the ex-husband, the story closes with a setting in which the Indians chant over the injured Eiseley to revive him from his wounds. One is to get the idea that an earlier story by grandfather Flying Bear relates to the line in my summary above. How it makes sense in relation to what just occurred is anybody's guess. I will say this though, I have a penchant for Native American Indian names, so it intrigued me that Flying Bear was portrayed by Stephen Small Salmon, while somewhat disappointing that an actor named Noah Watts played Joe Running Elk. They spoke in a dialect that captioning stated as 'Pend oreille salish', which was worthy enough to look up to see if such a thing was real. Son of a gun, Salish is a language spoken by the Flathead Indians, and I don't know how Wikipedia can be this accurate, but they say it's a language spoken by about a hundred fourteen people in the Flathead Nation in north-central Montana and northeast Washington State. I knew you were curious about that, so I looked it up so you don't have to.

That's soda pop!

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 30 June 2020]

Stratton Insley (Chris Snyder) loses the family farm upon the death of his father in Montana 1933. On the road, he meets a Native America (Noah Watts) in jail and they decide to go up to the mountains and make moonshine as some strange connection to the American Dream, founding fathers, a tribute to farmers, and all the Al Capones out there. He then meets a girl and a sheriff who doesn't like moonshiners.

This was a very boring two hours with a messages that wasn't well presented. Insley was a loser hothead. Who cared?

Guide: No swearing. Sex and nudity (Jolene Andersen)