Details make Flag truly fly
Last Flag Flying (M, 125mins) Directed by Richard Linklater ★★★★
In 1973 a young Navy corporal was escorted to a military prison by two slightly older and vastly more worldly Marines.
The journey became a road-trip of near-mythic proportions, as the the trio drank, caroused, fought and philosophised their way across the American north eastern states. If you have ever seen or read The Last Detail, then you’ll recognise that plot immediately.
The Last Detail went on to pick up Academy Award nominations for adapted screenplay, and also for Randy Quaid as supporting actor and Jack Nicholson as lead.
Making a loose-sequel to such a well-known and well-respected film is no easy task. Last Flag Flying director Richard Linklater is working from author Darryl Ponicsan’s own sequel to the original novel. The result is an unusual and idiosyncratic film that impressed me deeply.
The trio reunite in 2003. The young corporal is now a middleaged man. His own son followed him into service and has been killed in Baghdad. The body is due home in a couple of days, and now ‘‘Doc’’ wants his old escorts to join him as he takes his boy to Arlington for the military funeral.
A road trip of sorts ensues, of course, but one defined by its detours, missed connections and revelations more than its progress.
Last Flag Flying is a beautifully written, profoundly intelligent and quietly furious film.
Ponicsan draws strong threads between the trio’s war in Vietnam and the one unfolding on the TV screens of every bar and motel room the men are in.
On trains and in the cabs of trucks the men bicker, re-open old wounds and heal others. At one level, Last Flag Flying is an angry polemic against the lies and deceits we use to get our young men to fight wars for us.
At another, it is a very timely excavation of exactly what ‘‘toxic masculinity’’ means and from where it might grow. In the leads, Bryan Cranston fills out Nicholson’s old role with a performance that could and should see him pick up the same nomination Nicholson received in 1973.
Next to Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell are solid, and utterly believable. J Quinton Johnson is an actor I have never seen before. His turn as a young Marine who helps the trio on the road should be enough to launch a career.
Screen-legend Cicely Tyson also turns in a perfect cameo as the grieving mother of yet another departed son.
Last Flag Flying isa provocative, engrossing, entertaining and quite beautifully assembled film. Very recommended. – Graeme Tuckett