Last Orders
September. 10,2001 PG-13Jack Dodd was a London butcher who enjoyed a pint with his mates for over 50 years. When he died, he died as he lived, with a smile on his face watching a horse race on which he had bet, with borrowed money. But before he died he had a final request, 'Last Orders', that his ashes be scattered in the sea at Margate. The movie follows his mates, Ray, Lenny and Vic and his foster son Vince as they journey to the sea with the ashes. Along the way, the threads of their lives, their loves and their disappointments are woven together in their memories of Jack and his wife Amy
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Reviews
Too much of everything
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Perhaps because I don't, it always amazes me how well some really good authors (Shakespeare of course, and Ann Tyler come to mind) understand the complexities of the human condition. Fred Schepisi wrote the screenplay for "Last Orders" (he also is the Director) based on the Booker prize winning novel of the same name by Graham Swift. That is what this film is about - the complexities of people's dealings with each other and dealing with their own thoughts, plans, memories, and regrets.The title refers to a request Jack (double Oscar winner Michael Cain) left for his ashes to be scattered at Margate (a historic British seaside resort). Jack had an outwardly effervescent personality that caused friends he had made in his youth (he came of age just before the start of World War II) to remain life-long friends. Despite the war, in many ways those years of beginning their adult lives were the best in these people's lives. Perhaps that is the case for the majority of people.They had their futures to look forward to. One was a prizefighter who never had more than modest success. Another (the most steadfast of the friends) starts out as a funeral director and that seems to satisfy his desires. Jack, a butcher, inherited his business from his father and always dreamed that his own son would enter the business as well, but that's not what the son wants. He and his wife, Amy (Dame Helen Mirren), also have a mentally defective daughter who has been institutionalized since childhood. One of the significant conflicts is that Jack and Amy have opposite ways of dealing with that tragedy. Amy decides not to accompany the group when they take the ashes to Margate.Ray (Bob Hoskins), who Jack nicknamed "Lucky" because he pulled Jack into a trench half a second before a bullet would have struck him, owned a motorcar business but is more interested in playing the horses, with which he has had some success. He has a daughter who many years ago moved to distant Australia after falling in love with an Australian of questionable prospects, and they stopped writing years ago. Ray's wife had divorced him after she learned that Ray had assisted the newlyweds financially in their move to Australia.These loves and conflicts are revealed piecemeal via flashbacks as the individuals contemplate, and it is our coming to realize that relationships are more complex than what they seem on the surface.Not only is the screenplay based on a great novel, the cast is an ensemble of some of the most respected British actors, who all are great in their roles. They cast JJ Feild as the youthful Jack, and he strongly resembles Michael Caine in his early films. One warning: Some of the British colloquialisms and references may be unfamiliar to an American audience.
This film is about a group of friends and family travelling on the road to Margate in order to carry out Jack's last wish. They all go on a trip down the memory lane in addition to their road trip."Last Orders" is a touching portrayal of friendship. Their bond is so strong even after 50 years, this itself is a reason to celebrate. Nowadays it is hard to see such friendship in the age of digital communication, and yet everyone yearns for them. The flashbacks adds dimension to their long lasting friendship, and makes the characters so convincingly human. "Last Orders" is quite a depressing film, and you need to be in the right mood to appreciate its beauty.
How very strange to have a film such as Last Orders, a film that has its themes and its content revolve around death, loss and nostalgia and yet still manage to remain uplifting; positive, even. Last Orders is one of those films that covers a lot of ground in a two hour timeframe; it's sort of what Forrest Gump would have been like if Forrest Gump had had masses of friends and buddies to hang around with as his own life unfolded. But don't think I'm comparing films here because whilst Last Orders is great in its own retrospect, Forrest Gump remains the pinnacle of this sort of genre.I suppose Last Orders is to 'death' as Reservoir Dogs is to 'heist'. The idea that you get a load of male characters (although Helen Mirren's Amy plays a sort of important role); have them situated close to all but one place for the past tense scenes but now and again, showing the repercussions of said death/heist event in the present tense. While Reservoir Dogs' flashback scenes covered a whole range of locations, Last Orders fixes on a public house for the scenes in which all the characters are together but in order to understand more and more about them the film delves deeper into the past; much like Reservoir Dogs did with the Mr. Orange character showing us how the development of friendship and trust became apparent. Added to this, Last Orders in the present tense beds down in one locale; a moving vehicle as they travel to a pier in order to carry out the dead man's final wish parallels to Reservoir Dogs and the warehouse can be made here where, arguably, the most intense moments of clashing egos and best examples of dialogue float to the surface.But Last Orders isn't trying to be Forrest Gump or Reservoir Dogs, in my opinion two of the 1990s greatest films. No, Last Orders is a different beast; a tale of friendship and life that is pushed to an apparent breaking point even when the man has gone. It seems funny how with a cast like Hoskins, Caine, Mirren, Hemmings and Winstone one can be so easily attracted to the actors and actresses who play the characters in decades gone by. JJ Field does a superb job as a young Jack (Caine) as does Kelly Reilly with Amy (Mirren); what's more, there is an added sense of nostalgia when Anatol Yusef portrays a young Ray (Hoskins) when really it seems like he is playing Hoskins himself from times gone by you cannot help but smirk in appreciation. Even though the film plays out with one of its main characters actually dead throughout the entire piece, what makes Last Orders so successful? Well, it gets across a feeling of nostalgia; a feeling of time gone by. Secondly, it gives us these characters who we have seen many times before in films of a different genre; maybe even on a television drama if you're from Britain but it injects heart and soul into any usual stereotypes you might have expected.In order to break away from tired clichés or familiar archetypes, Last Orders develops almost all of its characters through out their respective lives. There are instances when Ray is tempted to engage in an affair with Jack's wife Amy; there are other instances that seem almost irrelevant: Ray's daughter marrying an Australian and moving away and Jack's son Vince wanting to follow a path in the mechanical trade rather than the butcher trade. Although these seem like mere formalities, they are actually extremely important plot points in these respective people's lives with the genius of it to follow: they all deal with loss of some sort. If Ray and Amy have an affair, Jack looses out; if Vince wants to become a mechanic against his fathers wishes then the '& sons' tag to the business is rendered false; if Ray's daughter wants to marry and move to the other side of the world, Ray and his wife loose their daughter on a certain level. But one persons loss is another persons gain: Ray's daughter has found love; Vince has found a career he loves and Ray has found love to a certain degree with Amy, even if it is at a friend's expense. This is where the film's main level of loss is challenged: When it is made apparent after five minutes it is the character of Jack that is dead, nobody wins but everybody looses. Thus, the ensuing road trip is everybody banded together to deal with the event.With the film's theme and consensus loss, it is no surprise tiny references are made apparent all the way through the journey. The lads visit a war memorial in a park to celebrate the 'loss' of life in the war; when walking through the cathedral, Vince talks about how interesting it is to have all the 'dead' kings and queens 'buried' in amongst the walls; there is even mention of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs harking back to times of old and great people who are now dead, echoing Jack and his life. Even stranger, what do we learn ourselves about Jack during the film? He is a womaniser who seemed carefree and outlandish; a man who wanted his son to do what he did and got angry when he didn't but despite Jack seeming like the least likable person of the group of lads, it is his death that has brought everyone together in a celebration of life above all other things. Last Orders is clever and engaging with a narrative that will entertain and may well have even pulled at some emotional strings by the time the obligatory scene arrives that itself is an achievement.
From Fred Schepisi, director of Roxanne and Fierce Creatures, this is quite a good drama. Basically it is all about the friends of Jack Dodds who have been given the difficult "last orders" of scattering his ashes to the sea. These friends, Vic Tucker (Tom Courtenay), Lenny 'Len' (David Hemmings), Ray 'Raysie' Johnson (Bob Hoskins) and (I think) Vince 'Vincey' Dodds (Ray Winstone) on the journey remember the good times with their friend as butcher and pub mate. Sir Michael Caine as Jack in the flashbacks is the nice guy with a good personality. I cannot remember much of what happens, besides the scattering, and the fact that Caine and Hoskins are in it, but it is definitely worth seeing. Also starring Dame Helen Mirren as Amy Dodds. Good!