‘Last Flag’ lowered by its maudlin plot
Films don’t get much more mediocre than Richard Linklater’s “Last Flag Flying,” a comedydrama based on a 2005 book by Darryl Ponicsan that serves as a sequel to Ponicsan’s 1970 novel, “The Last Detail,” with its action set 30 years later.
Billed as a “spiritual sequel” to “The Last Detail,” which was adapted to the screen by the great Hal Ashby (“Being There”) with Jack Nicholson in the lead, “Last Flag Flying” is a different, more soppy, sentimental followup.
Thirty years after serving together in Vietnam, alcoholic bar owner and former Marine Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) reunites with fellow Marine Mueller “the Mauler,” who is now the holierthanthou Reverend Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), to take the mildmannered former prisoner and Navy Corpsman Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carell), whom they had transported to the brig in Portsmouth, N.H., 30 years earlier, to Arlington Cemetery to bury his son, Larry Jr., killed in battle in the Iraq War.
Instead, Larry resolves to bury his son back home
in New Hampshire. They also agree to take Larry Jr.’s best friend and fellow Marine combat veteran Washington (J. Quinton Johnson) along for the ride. Thus, the three mismatched buddies (the leads in “The Last Detail” were played by Nicholson, Otis Young and Randy Quaid), plus their young protege, hit the road for the most part to bicker about whether there is a God (atheist Sal says hell no; preacher man Mueller a big yes and an amen) and what the greater purpose of dying in a war such as the ones waged in Vietnam or Iraq might be.
Any chance this hokey dramedy is going to end in big hugs all around? Cranston is given the most to say, and he does the best he can with the platitudes, homilies, cliches, commonplaces and contrivances. Fishburne also does what he can with the rabblerouser turned man of God thanks to the guidance of a good woman named Ruth (Deanna ReedFoster). Carell is almost grotesquely wimpy, especially when you recall how terrific the actor is as the ribald and greedy Bobby Riggs in “Battle of the Sexes.”
Ashby’s film was a poisoned poke in the eye of the political establishment at the bitter end of the Vietnam War. Linklater’s is a bland, if not cowardly, generalized condemnation of “war” with a “surprise” guest appearance by the venerable Cicely Tyson at the end.
If one more person started a sentence with, “You know what I think?” I was going to scream. The best performance in the film is given by Yul Vasquez (TV’s “Midnight, Texas”) as Marine Col. Wilits, a first cousin to Col. Kurtz and a man who has made a lifelong virtue out of being tough as nails.