Last Looks
NORDISK FILMThere is a chance that Last Looks will be the last looks audiences get at Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam. Director Tim Kirkby, behind such failures as Action Point, sends himself back into the fictional fray despite being, at best, a second-rate stand-up comedy camera director. If there were any further proof needed of that saddening reality, then Last Looks provides it. Kirkby is behind the camera for some great stand-up comedy vehicles, but his leap from non-fictional stage show to fictional studio surroundings is an uncomfortable one. An improved one, when compared to the Johnny Knoxville-led disaster of his feature debut, but not much of a leap to greatness.
It isn’t all bad, just none of it is good either. Last Looks takes the two leads needed to raise this off the ground and does little with them. Hunnam is an interesting choice and his output in recent years has been great. Last Looks is a rare leading role for The Gentlemen star. His role here as Charlie Waldo is a bland variety of strange. A fedora-wearing, chicken owning weirdo that amounts to very little throughout Last Looks. The real hope for his performance is that one of the many familiar faces whose stars haven’t shone all that brightly in recent years can come in and innovate. But depending on the voice of Mr Krabs, Clancy Brown and the elf from Netflix disasterpiece Bright – played by Lucy Fry – stacks the odds against Last Looks higher and higher.
That disgraced ex-cop storyline often has promise, and it does here. Although the camera remains oddly unfocused, the framing blurred around the edges like a strange special effect that snaps back and forth between static shots, making for a technical mess. Last Looks certainly hopes this is the last look its audience gets of it because there are some sincerely shoddy bits and pieces throughout. Its use of shadowy bars and black attire make for some nice nods to the noir genre, but that is all they are. Nods to something far better. Acknowledging a genre does not make a piece part of it. Last Looks is skittering around the edges of the noir genre, yanking at the fence and screeching to be let in while Drive and Sin City peer through the blinds rather awkwardly.
Loud and messy at the best of times, Last Looks has a notable cast to it but little to offer them or viewers. A streamlined route of mystery, a famous face here or there and before they know it, they’re finished. Their scene has come to a close and they fade out without a moment more to cement their, at best, forgettable performances. Performers who could have thrived on the intimacy a smaller, independent feature like Last Looks provides, like Hunnam, are hung out to dry with little impact on their roles. That is thanks to spotty dialogue and an unfocused director more than anything, but the most frustrating part of this Kirkby piece is there are remnants of good ideas throughout. It is, to some degree, worth seeing them through, not just for the Hunnam performance but for Gibson straining an English accent. These are strange observations that need to be seen but are never worth returning too.