Director: Hal Ashby
I decided to give The Last Detail two ratings because I think it's unfair to downgrade the films for the limitations of its time and genre. The Last Detail is a 70s 'road' movie in the aimless 70s way - there's a lot of scenes where people sit in a room, on a bus, or in a car, and talk. They don't talk in some sort of stylized speech, they're not throwing out punchlines, and they're not much more vivified than any person you may meet. Some of the time the characters are bored, and so the audience is likely to be bored as well. The plot is paper-thin and doesn't offer very much tension.
However, given the limitations of this genre, The Last Detail is still an engrossing character study. Nicholson gives an outstanding performance, playing basically the same character he plays in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Young and Quaid are similarly outstanding. It's hard to talk about the film's themes, or what it's all ultimately about - everything is so buried in the mundane. Underneath all that, there's a very rich examination of the way people live their lives.
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