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.

Conspiracy Theory - film review

Just before I turn to today's review, some readers may like to know that Amazon UK are featuring no fewer than three of my Lake District mysteries as Daily Deals - got to be  a snip at 99 p each!

Conspiracy Theory is a blockbuster of a thriller, first screened in 1997. I watched it not long after its release, and felt that its premise was brilliant, although the way it was developed was competent rather than outstanding. On a second viewing, I didn't revise that verdict. It's still very watchable, not least because it boasts Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and Patrick Stewart in the lead roles. But perhaps it doesn't exploit to the full the potential of the concept at its heart.

Jerry Fletcher (Gibson) is a paranoid yellow cab driver who treats his passengers to an endless stream of conspiracy theories which suggest that he's deeply disturbed. He is obsessed with a lawyer who works for the Justice Department (Roberts), who treats him gently, but shares the general; view that he is deluded.

But then someone seems to become worried about what Jerry is saying. Could it be that he's stumbled on to something serious that the Establishment want to cover up? Well, the answer isn't too hard to deduce, especially when Stewart turns up, playing a rather nasty doctor.. The director, Richard  Donner, has a long track record with action movies, and some of the dramatic scenes are quite thrilling.

The complicated truth about Jerry begins to emerge, but despite the pace of the screenplay, it emerges rather too slowly, so that we are left with a series of set pieces, and a developing but unlikely relationship between Gibson and Roberts rather than something subtle and more original. I feel the result is something of a missed opportunity, but nevertheless, Conspiracy Theory ranks as satisfying light entertainment,