The Last Shot

An FBI sting involves pretending to make a movie (this apparently actually happened). Matthew Broderick is the director, totally in the dark, Alec Baldwin is the FBI producer, who is gradually seduced, as everyone who has ever touched the movie business is, into actually wanting to make this turkey. The cast is to die for, especially Toni Collette, the situation is funny, there are a lot of funny lines … and yet it doesn’t quite come together. I kept feeling I should be getting more laughs. What it does best is to capture the giddy feeling of mixed joy and tension and full-focus dedication as a movie is developed and then actually goes before the cameras. As Roger Ebert said in his review, “Nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie.” This is true, I can vouch for it. Even the people working on a piece of shit like Alien vs. Predator or Taxi or Millennium have a vision. It may not be Kurosawa’s or Bergman’s vision, they may only be seeking to entertain you, but they want to do the best they can.