Last Flag Flying

This is one of the best movies of 2017.

It’s an assuredly thought-provoking film that’s earnestness doesn’t drag it into the weeds, concluding with a wholly deserved, humanely warm resolution.

It’s that graceful humanity that keeps Last Flag Flying from descending into melodrama. It dips a few too many times to stand with the filmmaker’s best work, and a few asides into “wacky old person behavior” are regrettable, but this is another solid dramedy from one of our best working filmmakers.

It’s in the uncertainties and dissonances of Last Flag Flying that Linklater’s humanism really expresses itself. Three men of vastly different values and temperaments come alive in the shared understanding that their losses were for nothing. And that shared understanding is something.

For all its seeming modesty, this is a mature, contemplative and mostly rewarding experiment: no awards-season bruiser, but a worthwhile B-side for Ashby’s venerable American classic.

Cranston, in Last Flag Flying, seeks out the same terrain, but his crudeness is more of a crotchety act, and the journey concludes on a glum conservative note. Some stories need not be told again. ♦

The effort shows in all three performances. Spontaneity is in short supply. The comedy seems willed, the solemnity mechanical, the dialogue rhythms awkward and self-conscious.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Through a mildly comical yet subtly solemn lens, Linklater deftly illustrates a generational story in which wars and losses shape men in different ways, delivering mixed emotions among characters.

the worst has happened.. Last Flag Flying Within few minutes Steve Carell opens up to his friends and it is hardly possible for someone to not cry; now this represents how good of an actor Steve Carell is, not that Bryan Cranston and Lawrence Fishburne are not in their A game. All the lead actors however different their character's nature is, plays a sore, vulnerable and prone to the experience they suffered all along their life is easily and majestically projected by them. Last Flag Flying is Richard Linklater's darkest film as it scraps up some brutal wounds and he depends completely on his cast for this part. And when it comes to offer some levity, hope and of course unusual conversations (the one thing no one can beat him on), he carries it on his shoulder. Last Flag Flying is a head held high movie (a new topic or genre for Richard and he is surprisingly good at it.) that lets the audience think about the consequences of the decision that one chooses which is represented in a mild and innocent tone.

After his son is killed in the Iraq War, the father (Steve Carell playing the quiet type) enlists the help of 2 former vet buddies (Bryan Cranston, who plays the loose cannon to the point of obnoxious and Laurence Fishburne, who's working the mellow minister angle). Together they travel from Norfolk to New Hampshire on a trip that involves lots of reminiscences about their time together in Vietnam. LOTS of memories and plenty of chat. While there are some winning moments and interesting interactions, there's also too much repetition. Even though the ending is mildly moving, the hoped-for revelations never create dramatic impact. Director Richard Linklater knows how to write engaging dialogue and create endearing human moments (he co-wrote with Darryl Ponicsan, the novelist that inspired the movie), but this conversational adventure could have been a lot more appealing with 30 minutes trimmed from its 125-minute length.

Not a great movie... and by the end, terrible. There were ideas to be explored, for example the issue of war glamorization, but it never went anywhere beyond an old folks road movie. It never dared to go there fully. It stuck it's toe in the pool but didn't jump in.