FRIES ON THE PRIZE
Stanley is a dying breed.
He’s a 38-year veteran of Oscar’s Chicken and Fish, a run-of-the-mill fast food joint in Albion, Mich., where he’s the night manager. Days before his retirement, he still lives with two deadbeat roommates, makes lame “Terminator” jokes and doesn’t know how to drive. But his passion lies with hamburger patties and honey-mustard sauce. Hollywood forgets guys like Stanley exist.
His final week of work is the subject of “The Last Shift,” writer-director Andrew Cohn’s sharp new drama about middle-class work, race and our perceptions of both.
Awkward Stanley (Richard Jenkins) has decided to move to Florida to be near his mom, so he’s told to train Jevon (Shane Paul McGhie) as his replacement. Jevon is a young black father, recently out of jail and on parole. He thinks he’s above the job, having had a column in his school paper and aspires to a more creative life.
At first, they spar. “If I’m still here at your age, put me out of my misery, please,” Jevon says. Gradually they warm to each other, even playing frozen hamburger-patty hockey to make the graveyard shift go faster.
You think you know where Cohn’s film is headed when an altercation in the parking lot hits you like brain freeze from a milkshake. A character we thought we knew cracks and goes down a ruthless path.
The wrench in the plot is aided by Cohn’s choice to do away with our usual fluorescent-light association with fast-food joints and make Oscar’s brooding and shadowy. There can be french fries and suspense. Jenkins is usually tapped for authority figures or confident characters. His mesmerizing Stanley, with downcast eyes, shaky speech patterns and erratic movements, is the opposite. He’s a weird old guy who you’d be glad to see regularly at a takeout window, if not ever as a dinner companion.
His head-butting with Jevon is fair and fascinating. McGhie speaks like a skilled debater as he tries to convince him Oscar’s has cheated the schlub out of money for decades. The duo also argues about race in a way where you see both sides — a tall order.
What not to expect from this movie, however, is grandiose emotions or Oscars-y shouts. It’s a low-key rest-stop story that appreciates life’s banalities and the struggles of ordinary people.