Last Looks - 2022 film review

Last Looks is a recent entry in that challenging and often underwhelming branch of film-making, the 'comedy thriller'. Striking the right balance between comedy and thrills is a far from straightforward task. However, Tim Kirkby's film, based on a novel by Howard Michael Gould, makes a good attempt at mixing the ingredients in the correct measures.

At the start of the film, we're introduced to Charlie Waldo (played by Charlie Hunnam), who has quit the LAPD for a simple life in a trailer; he has just one hundred possessions. A glamorous old flame called Lorena (Morena Baccarin) tries to encourage him to put his detective talents to work on behalf of a famous actor, Alastair Pinch, who has been accused of murdering his wife. Waldo plays hard to get, but after Lorena disappears he finds himself drawn into the mystery. And we find out that his new home is only a bike raid away from the city....

Pinch is played by Mel Gibson, who is entertainingly awful as an entitled British actor whose main redeeming feature is his devotion to his small daughter. There are quite a lot of amusing parodic touches, including the hero's obligatory fling with a pretty blonde woman, but the script is good enough to ensure that the audience doesn't become bored or irritated. The mystery plot, despite leaning heavily on tropes of the private eye genre, is soundly constructed.

I don't recall coming across Charlie Hunnam before, but he holds the film together with a performance of considerable range and humanity. A story of this kind can easily lose momentum after a few initial surprises and jokes, but Last Looks kept me interested to the end. Very good light entertainment.