‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’:
40 years after ‘Star Wars,’ actor gives role of melancholy Luke his all
Mark Hamill gives his all as Luke Skywalker.
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” brings something new to the “Star Wars” franchise: an exceptional performance. All “Star Wars” movies end up being remembered, and this one is going to be remembered for Mark Hamill. Here’s an actor who has spent a long time living with Luke Skywalker, being the guy who was in those movies, getting older, getting used to it, rebelling against it, carving out a place inside his head where he can have his own identity. And all of those 40 years of coming to terms with being Luke find their way into this performance. The movie begins maybe five or 10 minutes after “The Force Awakens” ended. Rey (Daisy Ridley) has found Luke on a remote rock of a planet, where he has lived like a hermit for long time. The last movie ended with the suggestion that Luke is the heavy artillery, the Jedi master who is about to get into the fight. But “The Last Jedi” immediately takes a different direction. Luke isn’t interested. He wants no part of any star wars. He may have seemed like a contemplative philosopher at the end of the last episode, but don’t let the gray whiskers fool you. He’s a bitter guy, who looks like Rutherford B. Hayes on a three-day drunk, and he’s filled with selfloathing, cynicism and regret. He looks like what 40 years can do to a person, and the gung-ho kid of yore is nowhere to be found on that face. Hamill is completely without compromise
here. There’s no twinkle peeking out from between the stern words. There are no new lessons for the veteran to learn, because he has already learned them all, and they have led him to this miserable, solitary existence. What a brilliant turn by writer-director Rian Johnson to land Luke Skywalker in such a way, and what a committed piece of acting by Hamill, who gives this everything he has.
As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty good, not quite in the same league as “The Force Awakens,” but an improvement over “Rogue One.” It has the feel and atmosphere of a “Star Wars” movie and gets pulses going with a strong opening sequence, in which Poe (Oscar Isaac), who always needs a shave, leads a ragtag group of fighters against a fleet of elite starships.
The Resistance faces steep odds throughout “The Last Jedi.” Basically, they’re losing the whole time. Still, they have one big advantage over the evil empire, and that comes under the category of faulty construction. Apparently every single device, ship or Death Star created by the Empire operates in a way that, if you just happen to hit one vulnerable spot, the entire thing blows up. Their engineers have just never quite figured a way around that.
The Empire’s Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) is a large, cadaverous entity with an evil English accent and a long scar on his head that looks like he tried scalp reduction surgery and it just didn’t take. His lieutenant is Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who is just back from killing his own father, Han Solo. Ren doesn’t feel all that great about what he did. He thinks he probably did the right thing, but he’s just not sure. In a series of telepathic communications, Rey senses the good within him, even if the audience has no idea what she’s seeing.
“The Last Jedi” has lots of moving parts, but the action mainly surrounds a couple of ambivalent men, Ren and Luke, and a couple of determined women, Rey and Gen. Leia, who are trying to save the galaxy. It’s good to see Carrie Fisher again, alive through the magic of film. She looks a bit frail, a bit worn down, but then one of the running themes of “The Last Jedi” is the toll that endless conflict takes on the survivors, who live with the awful knowledge that victories are never final. Fisher is the soul of this series, and it’s hard to imagine who could ever take her place.
The skillful plotting of “The Last Jedi” means there are lots of surprises, big and small. Whenever you think you know how things will play out, the movie pulls a reversal. Characters take turns being right and being wrong. Nobody knows everything. Johnson is likewise very smart in knowing when to play up the traditional “Star Wars” elements and when to spoof them. For example, Domhnall Gleeson plays a starched Empire general, and just when you’re sure the movie is descending into accidental parody, Johnson reveals the character as intentionally ludicrous.
As is often the case with “Star Wars,” a certain battle fatigue begins to set in after two hours, but Johnson possesses an instinct for when he has gone over his limit, and he varies or scales back on the space battles each time he needs to. In any case, it helps that Fisher, Hamill and to an extent Ridley ground the action in deeply wrought emotion.
You don’t see many sci-fi action extravaganzas that are about late-middle-aged disappointment, about wondering what it’s all about and whether any of it was worth it. It’s this element that gives “The Last Jedi” an extra something, a fascinating melancholy undercurrent.