Producers: Andrew Lazar, Christiana Weiss Lurie, Steven Shaimberg and Brad Feinstein Director: Tom Kirkby Screenplay: Howard Michael Gould Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Mel Gibson, Morena Baccarin, Lucy Fry, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Jacob Scipio, Clancy Brown, Dominic Monaghan, Robin Givens, David Pasquesi, Paul Ben-Victor, Sophie Fatu and Rupert Friend Distributor: RLJE Films
Grade: B-
It’s hard to pull off a new pulp noir today, either on the page or on the screen, but screenwriter Howard Michael Gould, adapting his own 2018 novel, director Tom Kirkby and an eclectic cast come reasonably close. “Last Looks” is no classic, but it’s an amiably convoluted modern stroll down a cinematic memory lane.
The inevitably washed-up hero is Charlie Waldo (Charlie Hunnam), an ex-cop living off the grid in a remote, run-down trailer outsiude L.A., still nursing a psychological wound from having sent an innocent man to prison, unable to reverse the conviction until it was too late. He’s visited by old flame and ex-partner Lorena Nascimento (Morena Baccarin), who offers him a lucrative job working for studio honcho Wilson Sikorsky (Rupert Friend). His assignment will be to keep Alastair Pinch (Mel Gibson), the star of one of the network’ biggest series, a legal show called “Johnnie’s Bench,” who’s accused of murdering his wife, out of jail long enough to finish the hundred episodes required for syndication deals.
The preferred route would be to exonerate the guy by identifying the real killer, but that will be hard because Pinch is a 24/7 drunk who was blotto the night of the murder and isn’t even sure he didn’t do it; the evidence certainly seems stacked against him. And Waldo doesn’t really want the job anyway, especially since a couple of thugs try to convince him, very forcibly, to stay away from it, and his former boss Big Jim Cuppy (Clancy Brown) will make sure that as a pariah in the department he’ll get no help from the LAPD. It’s only after Lorena turns up as a charred corpse in her car, and he sees that Pinch, despite his myriad faults, is a good father to his darling little daughter Gaby (Sophie Fatu), that Charlie decides to take on the case.
Of course, the investigation involves all sorts of colorful suspects, informants and opponents. One is Jayne White (Lucy Fry), Gaby’s beautiful schoolteacher, who comes on to Charlie just as she had, it’s revealed, to many of her students’ fathers. Then there are Darius Jamshidi (David Pasquesi), a mogul who’s threatening to take over Sikorsky’s studio and happily resorts to force to dissuade Charlie from working for his rival, and Sikorsky’s cunning lawyer (Robin Givens). Another lawyer, a sleazy, nervous fellow named Warren Gomes (Dominic Monaghan), also advises Waldo to get lost, while flamboyant tough guy Don Q (Jacob Scipio) threatens to off Charlie unless he returns something he calls REM that Lorena had taken from him.
Waldo wise-cracks his way through it all, taking a lot of physical abuse along the way, as he works to solve the mystery of who killed Pinch’s wife, how, and why. The answer is extremely complicated, and involves a long explanation by Waldo that aims to be a goofy approximation of what Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple might have contrived in similar circumstances.
“Last Looks” opts for a loose, loopy air, starting with the characterization of Waldo as a guy who’s striving for simplicity in his life–engaging in meditation, riding around on an old bike and limiting himself to a hundred material possessions, tops. Hunnam has a lot of fun playing him, first with a beard that makes Gaby call Charlie a lion and then clean-shaven after his encounter with Jayne. (He gets punched around repeatedly, but never shows any scars or black eyes.)
Kirkby obviously wants him played large and Hunnam jovially complies, but asks more even more flamboyance from the supporting cast, starting with Gibson. He sports a British accent (he’s supposedly a great Shakespearean), shifting into a Southern drawl for the judge he plays on TV, and never passes up the opportunity for an extravagant gesture as the boozing megastar who turns into a sentimental pushover whenever he’s with Gaby. The result is more caricature than character, but even more than Hunnam Gibson revels in the invitation to go cartoonish.
And he’s not the only one. Friend goes overboard as the all-powerful, brazenly opportunistic studio head, and Scipio seems to be channeling John Leguizamo at his broadest as the insistent Don Q, whose running gag involves repeatedly offering Waldo one more day to do his bidding and in the end who proves to have unusual literary aspirations. Brown, Monaghan and Pasquesi are no less over-the-top, though with less running-time their contributions are more concise, and Method Man appears as a rapper with a sideline. Meanwhile both Baccarin and Fry provide seductive eye-candy.
On the technical side “Last Looks” is adequate but unexceptional. Jeremy Reed’s production design gives Waldo’s trailer appropriate seediness and Pinch’s mansion a garish elegance, while Lynn Falconer’s costumes are notable for Charlie’s scruffy duds and some ostentatious gowns at a high-society party. Joe Landauer’s editing keeps the interlaced plot threads pretty clear, and Lyle Vincent’s cinematography is competent if undistinguished. There’s what must be intended as one morel joke at the close, when it’s announced, Ed Wood style, that the movie was “filmed in Hollywood USA,” because it was actually shot around Atlanta, and the Georgia peach icon is prominently displayed in the final credits crawl.
Though it’s certainly no “Chinatown,” the lighthearted “Last Looks” is enjoyable enough to merit a look itself. And since Gould has already published a sequel to the novel, Hunnam’s Waldo might just reappear onscreen down the line. There are a lot worse sequel ideas out there.