Last Orders (2001)

Overrated and overhyped

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Jack Dodds (Michael Caine) was an east London butcher who leaves his Last Orders to four men to fulfill. Gambler Ray Johnson (Bob Hoskins) is his WWII military buddy. Along with former boxer Lenny (David Hemmings), undertaker Vic (Tom Courtenay) and Jack's son luxury car dealer Vince (Ray Winstone), they take his ashes to scatter in Margate where he never got to retire with his wife Amy (Helen Mirren). Vince is conflicted about his parents after discovering his real family was killed in a bombing during the war. Their lives together are revealed in flashbacks. Amy is on her own journey to see her mentally challenged daughter.The cast is world class. With such bright stars, I had high hopes of explosive power acting. The story is disjointed with flashback vignettes. Honestly, I struggle to follow with the British accents and fragmented storytelling. It's tough to stay connected with each character. The constant jumping around makes it too much work.

Last Orders is a brilliant portrayal of four life long friends and their various highs and lows from late teens to near pensionable age. Told in multi flashback scenes, the centrepiece is the remaining friends reminiscing on a trip to Margate to scatter the ashes following the death of Jack (Michael Caine), the most valued and charismatic of their number. The film is weighty in places, but is rescued by the quality of the cast. Caine needs no introduction of course, but his presence in the movie is almost ever-present, even in scenes he is not in - mirroring the fact that on the Margate trip he is nothing more than an urnful of ashes. David Hemmings is also on top form, but for me Bob Hoskins steals the show, as the horse racing expert with a kind heart who harbours a guilty secret that torments him following Jack's death. Helen Mirren is also wonderful, and underplays her role as Jack's widow with typical aplomb. Perhaps Tom Courtenay and certainly Ray Winstone are a little underused, but as a study in long term friendship and how life can either humble us or mould us, this film is a moving and well made effort from all concerned.

Graham Swift's 'Last Orders' is a fine story about a collection of old men and their baggage (in every sense of that word); translated into a movie by Fred Schepisi, it provides an outing for a number of fine British actors who do a good job in bringing their characters out from the page. The film as a whole, however, is less successful than its source. Partly this is because of the difficulty that films have in weaving as seamlessly between the past and the present as books can: the movie is always unambiguously in one time or the other, and switching between them, whereas the original could roam as freely as thoughts; perhaps the structure should have been more substantially altered, to make it more suitably cinematic (for example, the story of each man could have been told in succession). And maybe because of this, the quiet drama of the story of Ray never comes out quite as clearly as it does in the book. But it's still fun to enjoy the interactions of the cast.

A marvelous screen adaptation of the stupendous and heartbreaking Graham Swift novel. Four friends travel across the English countryside to honor their dead buddy's wishes and scatter his ashes into the sea. Along the way, the back stories of these friends, their various fights and reconciliations, are recounted in flashback. It's a poignant and touching story about the evolving nature of friendship and the scariness and loneliness of growing older.The book had a Faulknerian structure; each chapter was told from the point of view of a different character. The screenwriter had the daunting task of adapting that unfilmable style to the screen, and he chooses to take a straightforward, linear approach, but the story doesn't suffer for it. Certain things are left out, but he chooses the right things to eliminate. Most importantly, the movie adheres closely to the book's melancholy but cathartic tone.A host of terrific British actors play the group of male friends: Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Tom Courtenay and Ray Winstone (where was Albert Finney?) But the powerhouse performance comes from Helen Mirren, as the angry but resigned widow. Her character didn't have any passages of her own in the book; you only learned about her through others. The screenplay's greatest alteration is in filling out her character and it also happens to be one of the film's greatest assets. A scene in which Mirren goes to visit her mentally retarded daughter in an institution (a daughter who may or may not even know who Mirren is) is quietly devastating.A truly extraordinary movie. It didn't get a lot of attention and I don't know a lot of people who have seen it, but I would strongly recommend looking for it (and read the book, too, while you're at it).Grade: A+