Last Looks

2021, Tim Kirkby (Brockmire) -- download

This post continues the tradition wherein I have another post sitting in drafts that requires more thought and likely a rewatch because I loved its subject matter, and because I likely have a lot to say about it, but will most likely end up saying, "uhh... movie good." In the meantime, I can distract you the reader, and my brain, with a quick post about a movie that I enjoyed, but didn't leave much of an impression one way or another.

Last Looks, originally called Waldo, after the main character Charlie Waldo, a disgraced LAPD detective who leads a couple of crime books by Howard Michael Gould, is a classic post-noir detective story set in and around Los Angeles, completely dependent on the city & environs as one of its characters. Waldo is hiding out, off the grid, in a trailer in Idyllwild possessing only 100 things, including a chicken named Chicken when his ex Lorena (Morena Baccarin, Deadpool; yes, a movie starring Charlie Hunnam playing a character named Charlie, and Morena Baccarin playing a character named Lorena) shows up to convince him to come back to the city to help her on a case, seeking to keep perpetually drunken Shakespearian actor Alastair Pinch (Mel Gibson, Fatman) out of jail for murdering his wife. Waldo says no, but circumstances, and the violent interventions by two different criminal parties who already think he is working with her, drag him into it, because of course they do.

Long sentences entirely intentional, as the standard convoluted plots and sub-plots of the pseudo gritty detective stories always seem to lend themselves to trains of thought running on and on and on.

I suspect the writer & director don't like LA people much, but love the city. Every character is quirky but most often unlikeable, but even the likeable characters possess traits that would sour most people on them. Pinch is a pompous ass, always drinking, dismissive of his wife's death (not even sure he didn't actually kill her, as he was blackout drunk at the time), constantly looking to get into fisticuffs, but utterly (and charmingly) devoted to his utterly cute daughter. Waldo doesn't really seem all that capable and spends most of the movie getting punched and/or kicked, but he does have a knack for putting all the details together. But the movie is not a whodunnit, as it doesn't dole out the details our way except in the most peripheral manner, so the end reveal is a leap of faith. But the weird, almost mythical nature of Los Angeles and the people within it is always fascinating.

I think about whether I would recommend this movie, and I am not entirely sure. For those who like the paperback style private dicks in LA, it is passable entertainment. For fun, quirky performances, it fills a back tooth. But as a movie, it struck me more as something to be consumed, rather than entertainment. This is one of those movies that people who watch a lot of movies will reference at some point in the future, more as a footnote in comment on some other movie with Charlie Hunnam or Mel Gibson in it. Or in a conversation about the city of Los Angeles and the entertainment business that makes it.