The Last Face

Penn's film doesn't entertain greatly nor does it have much coherent to say.

A spectacularly misjudged mix of humanitarian intentions and gonzo-terrible execution.

Plotless and leaden as a rusty drainpipe.

Even without its mopey, painfully on-the-nose dialogue and ponderous story, The Last Face sets itself up for failure with its premise, and Penn's apparent inability to recognize it as such. It's his worst movie.

Both the festival and filmmakers might have been better off waiting another week, until the screens were empty and delegates had all gone home, before unveiling this thing, perhaps to a slightly less derisory audience of seagulls.

As well meaning as this movie is, it is also a turgid, muddled one.

The nonsense really is rampant throughout, but the writing is on the wall (quite literally) from the opening introductory paragraph.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I like the movie. Maby the main reason is the great music, composed by Hans Zimmer! In my opinion, Charlize Theron was good. Had really sad, sad eyes, her expression was convincing.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Within the space of a single showing on the French Riviera, an ambitiously mounted action-drama-romance film with an A-list cast and an Oscar-winning crew became a pariah, not shown again for several months and unseen in the United States until an unheralded on-demand release over a year later. Unfortunately, The Last Face is deserving of its fate. I am an admirer of Sean Penn the director; with The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard, The Pledge, and Into the Wild, he proved himself a distinctive and engaging cinematic storyteller and transcended any actor-turned-director vanity-project stigma. But, wow, his first directorial failure is a momentous and peculiar one. There are a thousand and one ways to criticize The Last Face. I am not, as a hard-and-fast rule, opposed to the idea of a film focused on a Doctors Without Borders-type organization, but it is hard not to notice the conspicuous absence of a single interesting or multi-dimensional black character in a film almost entirely set in Africa. They are simply extras, present to smile or dance or, most frequently, violently die, while a banal Western love story is foregrounded. A love story in name only which drains Javier Bardem of his usual charisma and vigor and forces poor Charlize Theron to deliver nearly constant, wince-inducing voice-over. Sample: "The resilience and beauty offered by the refugees of war inspired an intoxication of intimacy, and in this place of so much war, had I found peace?" Just as tone-deaf and uncomfortably navigated are the lapses into didacticism, when characters express hoary the-world-doesn't-care opinions or deliver entire sermons-speeches on humanitarianism. The film is overwrought in several ways—a busy structure (lots of "ten days earlier in such-and-such place"-type subtitles), a cacophonous score of World-music chants and laments by Hans Zimmer—yet also thinly imagined, easily distracted, and without a convincing emotional center. There are even moments approaching genuine-albeit-unintentional camp comedy; consider a scene in which the two leads flirt via aggressive, flamboyant brushing of their teeth. Dental hygiene as mating dance. It beggars **** Sean Penn earnestly brought this to the most prestigious film festival in the world!