Dee Rees premiered at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival her third feature-length film, “The Last Thing He Wanted,” with expectations sky-high after the double-whammy she had with 2011’s “Pariah” and 2017’s “Mudbound.” Obviously inspired by the political/investigative thrillers of the 1980s, think “Salvador,” the film is based on Joan Didion’s novel of the same name and set during the Reagan-era, where the American government was purposely arming both sides of the contra conflict, causing chaotic civil war in Latin America and conflicting reports. Anne Hathaway leads the cast as a reporter who becomes involved in the very story she's trying to break by helping her father (an under-utilized Willem Dafoe) broker an arms deal. In doing so, bluffing her way out of a series of dicey situations, she becomes the very thing she was against as a reporter, interfering into Central American countries by brokering arms deals. The film turns out to be an incoherent mess of the highest order, there is quite simply too much plot for Rees to handle this film in a graceful fashion. Would a longer runtime have made things easier to bear for both Rees and the viewer? Maybe, but the end result consequentially has Rees in over her head, trying to maintain her narrative before it spins out of control, which it sadly does. Is this dud of a movie solely Rees’ fault? Not entirely. Some of the tracking shots the 43-year-old director concocts in the film are fantastic, no, the film’s flaws lay more with the incomprehensible screenplay (penned by Marco Villalobos and Rees) and the scattershot editing by longtime Rees collaborator Mako Kamitsuna, which isolate the viewer into trying to even grasp the Byzantine plot. [D]
“The Last Thing He Wanted” will be available via Netflix on February 3rd.
Oh, Sebastian Stan … he tells Variety that walking onto the set of "The Batman: Part II" gives him the feeling that he might be making "The Godfather: Part II." His exact words.