The Last Knights is yet another film version of the 47 Ronin legend. The legend is a story of vengeance and honor involving a group of highly skilled, but outnumbered samurai who remain loyal to their master long after he is put to death at great personal cost. Instead of samurai in eighteenth century Japan, this film takes place in some vague region in the past where merit matters and race and religion do not affect how you are treated, i.e. it is presumably Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s first stab at screenwriting. It stars Clive Owen as Raiden, the head of the knights, and Morgan Freeman as his doomed Lord Bartok.
I probably put The Last Knights in my queue under the misguided good will that Owen unexpectedly accrued in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur, which I really enjoyed; thus ignoring the long list of crap movies that Owen has been in since then. It does not hurt that he has been hot for decades, a great actor and that accent. Is drooling a good enough reason to watch a movie that you will check the credits to make sure that Uwe Boll did not direct it? Absolutely not. (To be fair, it is not as bad as a Boll film, but I had to ask.)
When Keanu Reeves’ fantasy filled 47 Ronin is a better version of the original story than The Last Knights, someone messed up. I grade movies on a curve so I did not need the film to have artistic integrity. It could have totally sold out and just had action scene after action scene to make me happy, but no, this movie makes you wait for one hour and fourteen minutes to get to the crux of the legend treating these soldiers like the Sam and Diane of vengeance—will they or won’t they? Why are we here? It would have been bold if the film did swerve and was actually a meditative story about soldiers adjusting to quotidian life as Hirokazu Koreeda came close to doing in Hana- the Tale of the Reluctant Samurai, which is a superb movie—watch that instead.
The Last Knights is disproportionately interested in Raiden. They set him up to be this really mean drunk as if he will become Neegan if he falls off the wagon, but we do not even get that. Instead the film is set up like a heist movie with Raiden disappointing us by just living a dissolute life….or is he? Is he going to join the gang or is he lost to them forever? I am not invested enough in Raiden to care where he lands. I also do not know Raiden enough to be impressed by his acting prowess. It basically becomes a character limbo contest to see how low he will go, which is frankly boring to watch when it is not horrifyingly and gratuitously misogynistic. If you are going to avenge my death, thank you, but if you are unable to simultaneously make sure that I am avenged and that everyone in my family does not become Madeline Stowe in Revenge, then choose the living. I am already dead. The women in my family do not have to be sex trafficked. Cool, got that? I really want to be clear about that point. Because if you successfully avenge my death, but the chicks in my family are harmed and traumatized, then I feel as if you failed. Is that too harsh? No, you failed.
The Last Knights was completely disappointing because it had a couple of great women actors: Ayelet Zurer, who is better known as Daredevil’s Kingpin’s girlfriend, and the velvet voiced Shohreh Aghdashloo. They are the equivalent of the gold used to make a toilet for some nouveau riche lout with no soul. Why?!? They basically play adoring wives watching helplessly from the sidelines as their husbands make huge decisions that affect them without giving them a heads up or consulting with them, which may be the only realistic aspect of the movie, but still. Zurer had more to do as the equivalent of a nerd Bond girl in the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. I may not be remembering it accurately, but Aghdashloo evaporates after the first third. I do not remember even a line of explanation, but it is possible that there was, and I mentally checked out of this mess.
The Last Knights initially seems cool because it does pull off that United Colors of Benetton vibe that only the CW usually can. Lots of people of color, people from different countries, multiracial couples, but then it is all window dressing because instead of casting A Separation’s Payman Maadi as the villain, Geza Mott, we get Aksel Hennie, who may be a good actor, but not good enough to save this movie, and the only thing that could have saved this film was its villain. If Mads Mikkelsen, Ewan McGregor or Michael Fassbender was cast as Mott, none of them would have slacked, and we would be transported into a world where we wondered if maybe this movie was good because they were tearing up the place with their skills, but no, instead I found myself giving a nickname to the villain: apple sauce.
How did he get that nickname? What really annoyed me about his storyline is that he does not like Bartok, who is basically on death’s door. He does a lot of shady stuff, but plays himself when he outright beats the old man’s ass, who takes time off of dying to inexplicably get the upperhand and make Mott into apple sauce. Not once in his trial does Bartok mention that apple sauce tried to kill him. Sure it would ruin the story because then he may get found not guilty, but then the writers should not have put themselves into a corner. Instead we get a noble speech against corruption and kleptocracies, which is pretty standard for us in 2016, but not specific to the situation before us. It was the exact moment that I realized that The Last Knights was trash. During a trial, no human being alive would not have started with, “He tried to kill me. It was self-defense.” I know that Freeman gives great monologues, but come on!
The Last Knights’ apple sauce is what you expect from a tropey villain. He has a little dog, likes beating people, screams a lot and descends into madness as the film unfolds. I never bought for one instant that his effectiveness outweighed the trouble that he caused the Emperor, especially since the Emperor and no one else seemed to like him that much. You know who could pull off the role of apple sauce: Lena Headley as Game of Thrones’ Cersei. She is so dangerous to herself and others, but usually just a step ahead because of it. GOAT!
If I had to say something good about The Last Knights, the last forty-one minutes of witnessing the execution of the caper was the best part of the movie if you can make it to that point. There is even a Trojan Horse like object, which I appreciated. Once the actual fighting started, it was decent, but not excellent enough to waste your time and watch this dreckitude.