Last
Exit Productions
| Review
by Crites
Didn't
have too much advance information on this
Danish indie thriller - even the box cover
wasn't giving anything away. LAST EXIT...
ghost story? Tragic romance? Drug drama-slash-road
trip? Some sort of a LAST EXIT TO COPENHAGEN?
Only one way to find out...
Married couple Nigel (Morten
Vogelvis) and Maria (Jette Philipsen) have
a distant and most uncomplimentary relationship.
He's a borderline alcoholic porn fan and
she's a closet junkie, and between their
separate habits they rarely see one another,
let alone spend any 'quality time' together.
Which seems to suit Nigel
just fine. Chronically unemployed and still
hiding out from the aftershocks of a failed
drug deal in another city, Nigel appears
content to drink his beer and watch his
lesbian porn long after his wife has gone
to bed. But when his seedy one-eyed friend
Tobias tips him off about a job possibility
offering "very good money," Nigel
is intrigued. Tobias' description of the
work is a little shady but it would mean
cash money under the table, something a
man in Nigel's position finds hard to refuse.
Agreeing to the as-yet-unspecified
job, Nigel is brought before an enigmatic
kingpin-like character known only as "The
President" (Peter Otteson, who is,
appropriately, most often shown seated against
the backdrop of a suicidally violent action
painting). And, not without some rather
sinister undertones, Nigel is given his
first assignment, one that sounds like a
cakewalk. All he has to do is stow fifty
unmarked boxes in his apartment for two
weeks, in exchange for which he receives
10,000 kroner on the spot. In addition to
this sizeable advance he's also plied with
a date with The President's pet, Tanya (Gry
Bay, who also performs a pair of the film's
songs), an exotic dancer who is, to say
the least, exceedingly friendly. Friendly
enough in fact to easily bat aside Nigel's
feeble protests of marital fidelity and
convince him to go back to her place for
vodka and sex.
And with that Nigel's life
appears to improve. His cash windfall not
only ensures that Tanya will want to keep
him around but may also help buy his way
out of trouble with the underworld faction
back home, a faction that has threatened
the life of the wife and child he ran away
from when his big deal went sour. There's
even money to spare for weed, which fuels
both a spacey conversation with overly verbose
drug dealer Jimmy (Nicholas Sherry) and
a psychedelic video-splashed session of
wild tantric sex with the enthusiastic Tanya.
Everything's gravy until the
boxes Nigel was holding are retrieved by
The President's men, and it's discovered
that instead of the specialty videos they
were supposed to contain they're loaded
with blank cassettes. Oddly The President
doesn't hold this against Nigel, and even
gives him another similar assignment right
away. A proffered kidnapping gig however
proves too much for Nigel, and the aura
of menace that's been escalating since meeting
The President causes our boy to lose it.
Drunk and high he ends up raping Tanya,
but it's not the rape she minds so much
as the fact that Nigel tries to leave her
afterward. Considerably upset Tanya brains
him with a can of beans and when Nigel comes
to, awakened by a cell phone call from his
wife, he finds Tanya slumped down in the
kitchen, her wrists slit.
Maria, meanwhile, is urgently
trying to summon Nigel home in order to
share some news with him. What she plans
to tell him when he arrives is that she's
pregnant, and she hopes this will be enough
to restart, or at least repair, their increasingly
damaged marriage. But while she cleans the
house, throws out her dope and makes herself
up for her husband, Nigel wanders the streets
in a daze, getting progressively more fucked
up on guilt, grass and booze. By the time
he gets home he is in no condition for family
planning, and when he hears the news it
hits him hard enough to send him reeling
toward his very own LAST EXIT.
And there's still a sizeable
portion of the film left to go, but to detail
Nigel's descent would inevitably prove to
be something of a spoiler. Suffice it to
say that things go wrong, very wrong.
LAST EXIT possesses a very
music-rich soundtrack (comprised largely
of pieces by Fabio Testa and Jacob Moth),
loaded with modern techno tunes and sweet
Euro-pop that nicely match the frenetically
dreamy motion of camera and characters as
they swing through darkened neon-scrawled
environments at an oddly-angled pace that
conveys the impression of drug-induced delirium.
The "foreign" atmosphere and imagery
conveyed by the Danish streets and settings
adds a good deal of exotic local color to
the picture, which when combined with the
lurid pink/orange/yellow color scheme makes
for a picture that borders on the hallucinogenic.
But not in a happy hippie way at all, as
Nigel's last days can attest.
The film also contains some
brutal, if not overly explicit, violence,
as well as at least one borderline Blue
Velvet moment (the scene in which Tanya
table-dances for Nigel while an unfortunate
member of the President's henchmen has his
eye carved out in the adjoining room, all
to the tune of "Nice Work If You Can
Get It"). And I, for one, appreciate
a film wherein one of the recurring motifs
is a great big can of pork & beans.
But despite containing all
of the requisite underworld characters and
plot elements, there's still something missing
from LAST EXIT. Drugs, crime, desperation,
cheap sex, lies, torture, murder, despair;
all of the staples necessary for an international
neo-noir cult classic are here, but are
combined and presented in a considerably
more blunt and simple fashion than, say,
Killing Zoe or Man Bites Dog. Perhaps too
simple in fact, as the limited number of
characters, settings and scenarios don't
manage to satisfactorily round out the film's
feature-length running time. As a result
this fatalistic crime drama is less gripping
than it is mildly interesting.
Or perhaps what's lacking
is empathy, for as a protagonist Nigel doesn't
possess a single redeeming quality. For
all of his faults and criminal misdeeds,
he is a being completely devoid of personality
and interest. Even when his wasted life
goes as horribly wrong as possible it's
still hard to care what happens to him one
way or the other. His wife's selfish self-destructive
behavior makes her as unsympathetic a character
as her husband, and even when she makes
the token effort to turn things around upon
the discovery of her pregnancy it is, literally,
too little too late. Side characters such
as Tanya and The President, while intriguing,
are never developed beyond the one-dimensional
stereotypes they appear to be.
Also at fault is the ever-more-prevalent
trend in independent cinema of underlighting
scenes. The picture contains far too many
darkened and dimly lighted shots, resulting
in some portions of the story playing out
in utter blackness. And as is not unusual
not only does this diminish the viewing
experience, but it also obscures crucial
moments of action. Perhaps in this case
the darkness is supposed to reflect the
characters' lives (fitting in with the previous
drug reference, along with the plot and
cinematography this trait does somewhat
convey the impression of a very bad trip),
but that's a stretch and if it is intentional
the filmmakers definitely need to come up
with another gimmick.
But with all of that being
said, LAST EXIT is probably worth a watch
by those in need of a bleak and low-lived
drama. Maybe not worth owning, or even worth
standing in line for, but a fair bet as
a portion of the program during an evening
of home entertainment.
The screener DVD is presented
in English without subtitle options or a
chapter selection feature, and the lone
bonus of the film's trailer. (I'm guessing
the retail release will be more versatile
and comprehensive.)
