Where to begin? Where does this film begin? How does it end? To most viewers, these are confusing questions that muddle any potential The Last Thing He Wanted had into a pile of nonsensical goo. But this is highly unexpected. The cast includes A-list stars like Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, and Willem Dafoe. Furthermore, the film is directed by Dee Rees, the talented filmmaker behind Mudbound and Pariah. There was so much talent going into this project. It is genuinely confounding how they collectively produced such an abysmal film.
Many of the problems in The Last Thing He Wanted stem from a screenplay that honestly fails to keep the audience engaged with the constantly evolving plot. While many films entering theaters treat audiences as if they lack the will to use common sense, it seems this one indulges itself in the complete audience. Screenwriters Rees and Marco Villalobos rely on their audience to have a fairly nuanced understanding of the American government’s intervention during the political unrest in several Central American nations during the 1980s. This is despite the fact that all the characters, as well as the newspaper for which Elena McMahon (Anne Hathaway) works, and the entire story of the movie, are fictional. From the opening moment of the film, the audience jumps into the world of Elena and, as many critics have noted, will fail to truly grasp the jargon that is being thrown around. It leads to a dangerous paradox that many will find at the bottom of the cinematic bottle — it says a lot without saying anything.
The pacing of the film is another issue. For the first quarter of The Last Thing He Wanted, nothing truly happens. Usually these smaller moments, in the beginning, serve to give us a reason to invest in the character. However, it feels like a filler designed to pad the run time. As a result, it feels like a long journey to reach the actual film. Afterward, even if an audience member managed to decode the incoherence of the storyline, one would find that the substance of the plot involves a rinse-and-repeat style of Elena finding someone who she thinks is an ally, only for her to run away from them out of fear. It is a bland recipe for boredom that, again, disengages the audience from the world of the film.
But the most infuriating part of the film is the ending that feels woefully pretentious and unnecessarily convoluted. Rees makes the decision to not directly reveal the fate of Elena. Instead, through minimal dialogue at a press conference, the audience learns about the true events that transpired off-screen. It also features a very abstract image at the end that is out of place in the somewhat naturalism that has been captured in the film up until this point. Rees robs the audience of a conclusion and fails to give meaning to the enduring efforts of Elena throughout the film.
Do not see this. This is not a bad movie to which you can uncork a wine bottle in the hopes of some laughs on a Saturday night with friends. It simply is bad. Unforgivable. Nobody asked for this movie to be made and it adds nothing to the concept of cinema.
1/5 STARS