The Last Face (2017)

Thanks for the memories!

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The general low rate given to the film can only be explained by the prejudice to the theme, the Western disinterest in debating Africa. Surely the movie is not so weak to have a 4.7 rating. Anyway, the movie is hard, very hard to watch. It shows one side of African life that no one in the West cares to know, much less give way to. And though a lot of people might think that the realism that Sean Penn employs in some scenes is exaggerated, in fact the real hell out there is much worse than in the movie. In addition we have the hard life of the doctors, impotent in the face of so much cruelty, and who still have to maintain the dignity and the healthy mind to continue his heroic work. Not everyone can handle it. Good performance of Charlize and Javier, in a cast in general quite correct. Unfortunately not everything is perfect and the direction sometimes is irregular, breaking the tense and distressing rhythm of the movie with romantic moments. Still I give 7.0.

This film is just plain awful.Its about white people dealing with what happens in conflict zones, and the people they help are there to get hurt so you can see how bad the white people have it while they are there to help and how it really affects their lives. boo hoo.Heres a run through of what happens in a couple of minutes: Doctors helping, doctors getting evacuated, look at all the dead locals, doctors crying on a plane with blurry cam.Eeish.The dialogue is overly cheesy at times, the camera work is just annoying when its constantly out of focus / blurred / tilt shift. It doesn't do bring anything to the film, its someone getting in a lift for crying out loud.Therons whispery narration is cringeworthy to say the least.Its just terrible. It really is. Its the kind of film that appeals to people who think thats all that happens in Africa and who feel really bad for the white doctors etc and say things like 'oh it must be awful to see all that' yet don't seem to give two hoots about the people its actually happening to.Its Sean Penn stroking his own ego. Its his idea of how he wants to be seen, so people will be all 'errmageerrdd, Sean'I only watched it to see if I could find myself in the carnival scene in Cape Town as I was there when it was being filmed. But thought I'd give it a whirl. got about 20 minutes in but my eyes were hurting from all the eye rolls so I just fast forwardI wish i could bleach this film from memory.

As an African I found the movie a vivid display of the harshness and splendour of this abused continent. It highlighted the unselfish sacrifice that people make to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people and the heartache that so often follows in so many ways. I also found this to be one of Charlie Theron's most honest performances.

Although there may have been some substance to the original story, it was certainly lost in the outrageously amateurish directing. A first year film student would have done a more professional job. The performance of the actors was equally disappointing, however this, I am certain, is in part do to poor direction and weak script.The gore scenes were, I am assuming, intended to shock, but they were so unconvincingly presented that they were more pathetic then disturbing.This is another example of the Hollywood ultra-left elite blaming "the rich west" for all of the problems in the world, when they themselves encompass a large segment of the "rich west" they are inditing. (Give up YOUR fortunes to save the world? NEVER!) If the tens of millions spent on luxury hotel suites, private planes, chauffeurs, actors and directors salaries and points, and the making of this horrendous rubbish were used to help and feed the 'refugees', I wonder how many that would have saved? Unquestionably more of them then this waste of film did.