Starring: Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne, J. Quinton Johnson, Deanna Reed-Foster
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Running time: 125 mins
BBFC Certificate: 15
UK Release Date: January 26th 2018

Several films have taken Hollywood by surprise in recent years by finding an older audience than the male teen dudes the City of Angels believe are the only people who go to the pictures any more. From Wild Hogs to A Late Quartet and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, films with older characters having a crisis have actually found an audience – and a big one. Obviously, the quality is always going to be patchy. Wild Hogs, about three middle-aged men getting back on their Harleys, was juvenile and dull in the extreme, but it did prove not every Hollywood film needs to have nubile bodies in bikinis running around a beach.

Which brings us to Last Flag Flying. Like Wild Hogs it features three men who have seen better days, and features them hitting the road for one last adventure. However, the tone here is far more serious. Steve Carell’s son has been killed in action in the Iraq war in 2003, and, as his wife has died of breast cancer. With no one else to turn to, he looks up his two old buddies, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne. They are much changed however. Cranston is an alcoholic running a grubby bar, while Fishburne is a preacher. Both are trying to forget their past. The marines want to bury Carell’s son in Arlington cemetery “like a true hero”, but he wants to take him back to New Hampshire and bury him in his graduation gown, not his uniform. So the three of them set off on an unlikely road trip. [Read more…]