Review of the film "Last Looks" - a detective comedy with Charlie Hunnam and Mel Gibson.
An ex-cop teams up with an eccentric actor to solve a crime.
Charlie Waldo (Charlie Hunnam) was once a famous police officer in Los Angeles, but after a series of tragic circumstances, he quit his job and moved to live in the woods. The rest of the man is disturbed by his ex-girlfriend, who offers him to take on the case of the murder of the wife of actor Alistair Pinch (Mel Gibson), who is also the main suspect. Soon Waldo, trying to unravel the tangle of mysteries, gets involved in a showdown with gangsters and intrigues of local residents.
The first minutes of the film seem like a documentary about an ecological lifestyle. A kind of portrait of the hero Charlie Hunnam - a minimalist who lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere and has only a hundred things in his arsenal. Having lost all sorts of landmarks both in his career and in life, Waldo appears before the audience as a kind of hermit whose interests are stuck in the range from domestic chicken to meditation. Such sketches of the protagonist are confusing and alien to the character, who is about to put on a leather jacket and go looking for the killer. But the imbalance brings a drop of freshness to the picture and gives hope for a more detailed disclosure of the detective's personality. It's a pity, but the authors quickly forget about all the features of Charlie, and, absorbed by the crime of Los Angeles, he turns out to be an ordinary closed bloodhound, of which there were clearly more in the movie than Waldo's things.
The picture has absorbed all the tropes of the classic detective story. As already mentioned, the main character is a taciturn, languid man who wanders along the alley of redemption. Around him are a cluster of sleazy lawyers, lacking ingenuity of police officers and, of course, femme fatales, who appear only so that Waldo can show off his mind. In fact, any claims seem unfounded, because, let's be honest, Tim Kirkby's film does not claim to be a new version of Knives Out. Despite all the annoying stereotypes, you can still get some viewing pleasure. First of all, of course, thanks to the leading actors - Charlie Hunnam and Mel Gibson. As if having moved straight from the golden age of the detective genre, the heroes walk around in hats and at any second are ready to cling to the opponents' throats (although Waldo, being a pacifist, pretty much resists before the start of each fight).
There is this kind of movie, the viewing of which may not be an end in itself, but certainly saves you from the painful choice of a background companion for the evening. While the hero solves the problems of a Hollywood star, you can redo all the chores around the house and not lose the thread of the story. Perhaps if the detective as a genre needs rethinking and new ideas, this does not mean that trinkets in the spirit of "Waldo" have no future. Especially in Russia in 2022, where the California sun and Charlie Hunnam's smirks are a necessary element of escapism, taking you away from disturbing news.
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