WILSON WEBB
Last Flag Flying
When the film world expects Richard Linklater to bob, the Austin-born auteur likes to weave. Boundary-pushing experiments in genre (A Scanner Darkly), storytelling (the Before trilogy) and cinematic form (Boyhood) populate his nearly three-decade career. But Linklater has also been equally adept at churning out thoughtful entertaining products that call to mind classic Hollywood’s heartfelt subversiveness (see School of Rock).
A road trip comedy with ripe anti-establishment leanings, Last Flag Flying falls squarely into this latter category. Set stateside in 2003 while America’s invasion of Iraq rages on, the film reunites three old military buddies who shared many a volatile moment while serving together in Vietnam decades before. While not firmly a sequel to Hal Ashby’s seminal counterculture masterpiece The Last Detail, as many original press junkets suggested, the two are thematically and ideologically connected. Call them cinematic brothers in arms—some character names have changed, but their distinct personalities and complexities remain in tact.
Beginning with an old-fashioned crane shot one might find in a 1940s melodrama, Linklater introduces Larry “Doc” Shepard (Steve Carell) as he walks solemnly down the rain-drenched streets of Norfolk, Virginia. He enters a dank tavern owned by Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston), and the loud-mouthed proprietor doesn’t initially recognize his long lost friend, who quietly sits with the unassuming presence of a man hoping to momentarily disappear.
Last Flag Flying gives the two the opportunity to relive old times, but after a night of hard drinking Doc asks Sal to drive him out of town for a surprise road trip. Their destination is the Baptist church of Reverend Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne). Upon arriving, both Doc and Sal are shocked to find their once hard-drinking friend is now a devout agent of God. Here, the film finally unveils Doc’s rationale for their impromptu reunion: His young son has died in action, and he would like their help handling the burial at Arlington.
Linklater and co-writer Darryl Ponicsan (author of the source novel) navigate external conflicts and internal doubts that arise from this request. Sal’s mischievous devil and Mueller’s stoic angel chirp contrasting advice at Doc, a man who is so forlorn from experiencing consecutive losses that he hardly has the strength to speak. Cranston’s rowdy impulsiveness and Fishburne’s subdued forcefulness are directly indebted to the original characters played by Jack Nicholson and Otis Young, whereas Carell makes the character of Doc all his own.
The trio’s various adventures and pitfalls lead them into airplane hangars filled with the coffins of American soldiers and bus stations lurking with cartoonish Homeland Security agents. Notions of patriotism, service and brotherhood begin to evolve past surface level representations found in rousing recruitment slogans and the brash monologues of commanding officers. No longer impressionable young soldiers, Sal, Doc and Mueller have the life experience to call out hypocrisy and injustice when they see it.
As more time passes, Linklater gives these men the space to further excavate each other’s lives. How everyone has evolved (or hasn’t) becomes a key point of contention, especially between Sal and Mueller, who often perform like competing sides of a Greek Chorus living inside Doc’s head. “We were all something once,” one character laments. Memories of past triumphs and tragedies are always informing the present.
Without depicting combat, Last Flag Flying, which opens Friday, Nov. 10, examines the immeasurable personal cost of war at the human level. It shows special affection for friendships developed between soldiers under stressful circumstances, but also potent anger toward those military institutions that do them disservice by fabricating heroism to cover up mishaps and bad timing.
Questions of purpose and identity inform genuine feelings of guilt that cannot be explained away. This comes to pass most powerfully in the funeral service scene where Doc finally discovers a sense of closure that transcends the military’s standard “thoughts and prayers” response. For a modern film to complicate the definition of patriotism in such profound ways feels revolutionary.