Here are the opinions of a movie critic on what went wrong in The Last Thing He Wanted (Movie Review)
The Last Thing He Wanted Movie Review – According to film critic Peter Travers, here are the things that went wrong in this movie which was based on Joan Didion’s 1996 novel.
This is a political-thriller movie that features Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, and Willem Dafoe. Dee Rees (Mudbound, Pariah) directed the movie. Basing on the main cast and the director, a lot may expect that this is something to look forward to. However, according to Travers, bad things can also happen to creative people. And a good example of this is Rees’s co-written movie with Marco Villalobos.
The Netflix Original exhibited incoherence courses. Unfortunately, the role of Hathaway in the said movie also made her natural luminosity dimmed down to zero, Travers said. She played the role of Elena McMahon, a D.C. journalist who’s been told to stop reporting on the Reagan-era scandal she’s been covering. It was about U.S. funding of the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.
Her new assignment was to cover the president’s 1984 re-election campaign for the fictional Atlantic Post. However, in the movie, Hathaway’s character was brought to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, and Miami. It was not fully explained or revealed why. Her dad, Richard (Willem Dafoe), needed her to pull a job that takes her back to Contras.
The situation worsens for Elena when she met shady diplomat Treat Morrison played by Ben Affleck. According to the film critic, for an obscure reason, Elena jumped into bed with Treat. Out of the blue, divorced Elena called her daughter at the boarding school who is unhappy. Then, she takes a job as a maid at a resort run by an ex-pat played by Toby Jones. At one point, she seeks guidance from fellow journalist Alma (Rosie Perez).
In the novel, the author “mercilessly exposed the hollow core of American democracy”. On the other hand, in The Last Thing He Wanted, there’s a series of baffling loose ends and it settles for just being hollow, according to Travers.
Here’s the trailer.
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