This film recently hit Netflix in the past few days and with such a star-filled lineup including Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, and Willem Dafoe I think most people would look forward to watching it.
After suffering through the near two hours of runtime, I can't even say for sure what the film was about and this is not a good sign. I think most people would like to have some sort of idea about what is going on in a film they are watching and that really doesn't happen in *The Last Thing he Wanted*.
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Anne Hathaway plays Elena McMahon who is a seriously dedicated investigative reporter who has been spending a great deal of time uncovering the USA's involvement in providing weapons to rebels in conflicts in Central America and the Caribbean. This is dumped on us in fast-forward in the first 5 minutes of the film in rapid succession. You really gotta be staring at the screen in order to take it all in because it takes place in multiple languages.
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Elena is abruptly pulled from the assignment, much to her dismay, in order to follow the campaign trail of Ronald Reagan instead. She is vehemently opposed to this but we are given the impression that the government is aware of the progress she is making and there is a top-down directive to throw her off the scent - so to speak.
However, this is never directly shown or stated but is rather shown to us in a very cryptic, "maybe that's it" type way. I have read that this uncertainty was intentional by director Dee Rees. I enjoy a bit of thought being necessary to understand a film but this takes it a bit too far.
"Elena" is jumping all over the place and much of the time, even if you are really really paying attention, you don't understand why it is that all of a sudden she is now in Haiti, or Costa Rica, especially when her job dictated that she was definitely supposed to keep covering "puff pieces" on the campaign trail.
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Ben Affleck pops in from time to time but is far from a lead actor in this mess of a film. His name is Treat Morrison, (seriously, his name is "Treat") and we are kept guessing about whether or not he is good guy or bad guy to the point where when you finally figure it out, you don't care anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Ako4nNIWA
That trailer actually makes the movie appear as though it is going to be a fast-paced action / thriller but I can assure you that it is not. It is mostly dialogue and a great deal of that is so disjointed that it just adds to your confusion.
The film currently enjoys a less than 20% rating on most review sites and professional reviewers are giving it 1 star left and right. There is a very good reason for this: While the cinematography and location scenes are very well done, it simply isn't complete as a film. There's movies that make you think while you are watching them (which most people like) and then there are films that even after it is over you don't really have any idea what happened.
For the most part I would be surprised if most people can make it all the way to the end of this movie because there is just so much going on, much of which doesn't really even have anything to do with the overall story, that audiences the world over are going to reject this political thriller and I think your time would better be spent elsewhere.