I don't know much about film-making, but good movies have to tell some sort of a story...your characters have to start and complete their journey. In Last Exit to Brooklyn they may, but its not in any satisfying way, and I'm not meaning a happy ending, just ANY ending.
Last Exit to Brooklyn, set in 1952 Brooklyn during a very brutal labor strike, sets a number of story threads in motion. Most involve some of the most unlikeable characters to ever walk across a movie screen. But Last Exit to Brooklyn fails to bring these stories to any conclusion...it leaves some of them dangling with no ending, or blasts off into some bizarre stratosphere for an "artistic" ending.
Two cases in point, and they contain spoilers.
A sad transvestite character (an important character in the film), is struck by a car and killed. And that's it for him in the movie....he's gone for good, erased from everyone's memory..no reactions from his friends, enemies, lovers....nothing.
In another thread the stupid, clueless, and secretly gay strike leader, having been rejected by labor, his gay lover, and found out by the neighborhood thugs, gets stomped by the thugs. The closing scene to the beating shows the streets of Brooklyn, and the streetlights are very, very similar to those of Nazi death camps...and the scene drags on and on and on...and the camera pans down to the body of the labor leader, and he's been crucified.....ppppuuuulllleeeeeez. And of course that's it for him too....brain erasure.....gone.
Bottom line....no matter what the reviewers originally said in 1989 about this film....this movie is a depressing piece of sludge. Avoid it. And if you don't be forewarned, it really deserves an NC-17 rating for massive amounts of physical, emotional and sexual brutality...don't even let the teenagers watch.
Last Exit to Brooklyn, set in 1952 Brooklyn during a very brutal labor strike, sets a number of story threads in motion. Most involve some of the most unlikeable characters to ever walk across a movie screen. But Last Exit to Brooklyn fails to bring these stories to any conclusion...it leaves some of them dangling with no ending, or blasts off into some bizarre stratosphere for an "artistic" ending.
Two cases in point, and they contain spoilers.
A sad transvestite character (an important character in the film), is struck by a car and killed. And that's it for him in the movie....he's gone for good, erased from everyone's memory..no reactions from his friends, enemies, lovers....nothing.
In another thread the stupid, clueless, and secretly gay strike leader, having been rejected by labor, his gay lover, and found out by the neighborhood thugs, gets stomped by the thugs. The closing scene to the beating shows the streets of Brooklyn, and the streetlights are very, very similar to those of Nazi death camps...and the scene drags on and on and on...and the camera pans down to the body of the labor leader, and he's been crucified.....ppppuuuulllleeeeeez. And of course that's it for him too....brain erasure.....gone.
Bottom line....no matter what the reviewers originally said in 1989 about this film....this movie is a depressing piece of sludge. Avoid it. And if you don't be forewarned, it really deserves an NC-17 rating for massive amounts of physical, emotional and sexual brutality...don't even let the teenagers watch.