The Last Thing He Wanted review


‘The Last Thing He Wanted’ is a journalism story that turns into an estranged father daughter story that turns into an international conspiracy thriller that turns briefly into a spy film before finishing up as a different, more schmaltzy type of thriller; Phew!

A lot of A-list talent shows up in Dee Rees’ new Netflix movie, Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, and all of them seem to have been drawn into a different type of project. Hathaway’s grizzled reporter and Affleck’s slick politician are never on the same page, with each other or with anyone else that pops up for short, confounding sections. The overarching plot never settles into a coherent point of view or establishes any dramatically gripping stakes, leaving the viewer to stumble from scene to scene with no real grasp of how we’re supposed to think or feel about anything that’s happening.  

The cigarette stained production design would probably be the films best feature, but for the fact that with no clear tone established a lot of it just comes across as flat, as does a lot of the Reagan era foreign policy critique. Much of this has the feel of something that should be interesting or entertaining, Affleck’s own Oscar winning ‘Argo’ for instance, but even with a lot of potential hooks waving around it never managed to sink any of them into me. With all this money and talent on display I really wish I’d had a better time watching this.     

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