The Last Detail (1973)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Brilliant and touching

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Alternately funny, ribald, rude, candid, thoughtful and occasionally boring odyssey of three sailors on liberty. Signalman First Class Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Gunner's Mate First Class Mulhall (Otis Young) are assigned to escort young Seaman Meadows (Randy Quaid) from Norfolk, Virginia to a naval prison in Maine; Meadows, a chronic shoplifter, attempted to steal $40 from a polio charity collection box and was handed a stiff eight-year sentence in the brig ("Six with two years off"). Getting to know each other on the train heading north, Buddusky and Mulhall take pity on their virginal captive and decide to make the most of their free time with some carousing in Washington, D.C. and in New York City. A few of their pit-stops--to a bar to get loaded, to a men's room to pick a fight with a few Marines, and finally to a whorehouse--are de rigueur for a military piece (one almost expects it); however, a side-trip to a Buddhist chanting session is rather disarming, and the three men look both ridiculous and wonderful while cooking wieners outdoors in the dead of winter. Written by Oscar-nominated Robert Towne, adapting Darryl Ponicsan's novel, the film has to go a long way on dialogue, and some of Towne's chatty passages just feel like filler. Still, while the picture isn't exactly witty, it does have some very funny scenes, and the acting is terrific (Nicholson and Quaid were both Oscar-nominated--Quaid in what is probably the best acting of his career). Michael Chapman's "colorless" color cinematography took some criticism in 1973 for being too dark, though it looks great today. Hal Ashby's too-leisurely direction is prodded by amiable and subtly moving moments. **1/2 from ****

There is a popular concept that even though our world changes over time, people really don't, so we are still more or less the same as we were a couple decades ago. Well, when watching some films from that time, it certainly feels as if they were made for a different audience. I guess that's what moral ageing is about: if the film characters still feel like real natural people decades after, the film did something right. Casablanca is the kind of movie that haven't lost a thing over 70 years. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about The Last Order.It's easy to be called a backwards moron by criticizing a movie nominated for three Oscars and starring Jack Nicholson, but I'll take my chances. The film's biggest problem is not even the plot, even though it feels way too straightforward, with side stories shallow as a puddle. It's the characters. Not a single person in this film felt natural, as if they were stiffly trying to impersonate someone but realized their failure and tried to compensate for it with over-acting. Monologues and dialogues, spontaneous yelling every now and then, all that stuff felt way too forced and uncalled for. Who knows, maybe 40 years ago the sailors were indeed overly aggressive and mentally unstable brutes mixed with whiny demented crybabies, but even civilians in this film act like people on drugs. Different characters on different drugs though, so I can admit some diversity on that account.But, at the end of the day, you're left wondering what the purpose of this film was. To show the controversial deepness of people's souls which reveals itself in the most unlikely cases? Well, in that case The Last Detail didn't go deep enough and never dared to dig beyond the stereotypes and movie psychology. Was it to share a touching story that we should empathize with? That was it's also a miss, because the character of Meadows never felt like the person you'd feel for, instead, he looks like a halfwit who is always calling trouble upon himself, willingly or not. Being a sympathetic retard is a hard mission, and Forrest Gump is probably one of a few cases of that mission's success, but Randy Quaid is no Tom Hanks by any means.Was this film awful, so that you'd regret spending 109 minutes of your time on it? Probably not. Is it safe to skip and spend your time on something else? Definitely so.

Two Navy men are ordered to bring a young offender to prison but decide to show him one last good time along the way. Starring Jack Nicholson and a young and scary Randy Quaid before he went insane now is this movie that deserves a 7.6? No does it have anything memorable? Well not really except Nicholson kicking the crap out of Quaid and a girls boobs that's about it. Honestly it's kinda boring and there where a lot of times that i wanted to stop the film and put it back on the box but i kept watching it because of Jack Nicholson other than that the film does have some nice performances and it keeps up during the ending but other than that it was an OK movie nothing more. I give it a 7 out of 10.

Mid-December 1973 was writer Darryl Ponicson's shining moment. Over a period of six days two of his first four novels—'The Last Detail' (Dial Press, 1970) and 'Cinderella Liberty' (Harper & Row, 1973)—had their big screen debuts. Adapted by the estimable Robert Towne ('Chinatown') and directed by Hal Ashby ('Harold and Maude'), 'The Last Detail' stars Jack Nicholson as Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky, a U.S. Navy petty officer and a "lifer," Otis Young as Gunners Mate 1st class "Mule" Mulhall, another Navy career man, and Randy Quaid as Seaman Larry Meadows. While stationed at Norfolk (Va.) Naval Base awaiting their next cruise, Buddusky and Mulhall are issued .45s and assigned to Navy Shore Patrol. Their mission or "detail" is to escort 19-year-old sailor Larry Meadows to Portsmouth Naval Prison on the southern Maine coast, where Meadows will serve an eight-year sentence for the attempted theft of $40 from a base charity box. The six hundred-mile train trip from Norfolk to Portsmouth can be done in two days but Buddusky insists that he and Mulhall show Meadows a good time before he begins his draconian prison term for such a petty offense. Overnight stops in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston stretch the detail to four days, during which the prisoner and his two guards get drunk together, get into various scrapes, get the virgin Meadows laid, and generally bond with each other—until Meadows tries to escape in Boston. A gritty, expletive-strewn character study of military life at the tail end of the Vietnam era, 'The Last Detail' has been praised by Navy veterans for its authenticity. More than an entertaining and memorable film about male camaraderie, 'The Last Detail' is also an unflinchingly poignant look at tragically stunted working-class lives.