‘The Last Victim’ Review: A Languid Neo-Noir Partly Redeemed by Ali Larter’s Strong Performance
13.05.2022 - 07:59
/ variety.com
Joe Leydon Film CriticWhile staring glassy-eyed at interminably long stretches of “The Last Victim,” I was reminded of a ‘60s variety show sketch I viewed during my adolescence. The premise of the skit: Producers of some returning fall shows were told at the last minute that their series had been expanded from 30 to 60 minutes, and they had to stretch scripts that had already been written.
So everything — walking down hallways, rifling through files, preparing coffee, everything — was done very, very slowly. The sketch, as I recall, was amusing.
“The Last Victim” is not. At least, not intentionally.The latest in a seemingly endless line of neo-noir thrillers with a neo-western gloss, “The Last Victim” plays like the work of people who watched “Blood Simple” and “No Country for Old Men” several times, slapped themselves on the forehead and said, “Hey! We can do that!” Not so, based on the evidence presented here.
Instead, director Naveen A. Chathapuram and scripter Ashley James Louis, working from a story by Chathapuram and Doc Justin, have cobbled together a derivative and numbingly pretentious piece of work distinguished only by the relative novelty of a female lead (well played by Ali Larter) who’s as resourceful, resilient and, when push repeatedly comes to shove, purposefully brutal as guys usually are in movies like this.
From the start, during an extended late-night conversation between a drawlingly loquacious killer and his skittish intended victim in an isolated roadside barbecue café, the filmmakers flaunt their influences like prideful banners of movie geekdom. (Evidently, “Pulp Fiction” also loomed large on their viewing list.) By the time the shooting stops, there are quite a few inconvenient corpses to
.