Dud of a film that wastes the talents of Richard Jenkins.
It's a movie that wants to be culturally relevant, focused as it is on the prickly relationship between a white boomer who doesn't think racism is even a thing and the young black man who he's tasked with training for a job at the fast food restaurant where they work. But there have been so many better movies about America's racial divide in the last two or three years that this one gets completely overshadowed. It's the film's own fault, because it's tonally all over the place and meanders around until it just gradually peters out, like a music box winding down.
I saw this because Jenkins is in it, and I'll see anything he's in. Therefore it pains me to say that he's largely the reason the film doesn't work. I don't feel like he had a good read on this character or how to play him. It's like he was asked to shoot for a sort of dead pan screwball comedy that he can't land. I fault the director, because Jenkins has proven that he can do just about anything. See "Kajillionaire," which also came out this past year, as an example of Jenkins' mastery, and in which he brilliantly pulls off the very same vibe I think "The Last Shift" was trying to capture.
Grade: C-
It's a movie that wants to be culturally relevant, focused as it is on the prickly relationship between a white boomer who doesn't think racism is even a thing and the young black man who he's tasked with training for a job at the fast food restaurant where they work. But there have been so many better movies about America's racial divide in the last two or three years that this one gets completely overshadowed. It's the film's own fault, because it's tonally all over the place and meanders around until it just gradually peters out, like a music box winding down.
I saw this because Jenkins is in it, and I'll see anything he's in. Therefore it pains me to say that he's largely the reason the film doesn't work. I don't feel like he had a good read on this character or how to play him. It's like he was asked to shoot for a sort of dead pan screwball comedy that he can't land. I fault the director, because Jenkins has proven that he can do just about anything. See "Kajillionaire," which also came out this past year, as an example of Jenkins' mastery, and in which he brilliantly pulls off the very same vibe I think "The Last Shift" was trying to capture.
Grade: C-