There has to be an explanation for what went wrong here. How does a project, co-written and directed by Dee Rees, her follow up to the Academy Award nominated Mudbound, fall so far off the rails? Rees not only once again had the supporting of Netflix, but was adapting the Joan Didian novel The Last Thing He Wanted. Somehow, despite the considerable talents of Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, and Anne Hathaway, the movie of the same name is an utter disaster. One of 2020’s worst so far, it seems destined to end the year in a position of dishonor. It boggles the mind how wrong this all went. The film is drama mixing conspiracy thriller, crime, and mystery elements. Taking place in the mid 1980s, we follow journalist Elena McMahon (Hathaway) as she investigates what will eventually become the Iran Contra controversy. Along with a fellow veteran D.C. journalist (Rosie Perez), Elena is close to a breakthrough when her newspaper pulls her off the story and places her on Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election. Furious, her life is all the more complicated when her father Richard (Dafoe) is bed-ridden and needs her help. They never had a good relationship, but making a last wish, she takes over a shady job of his. Never fully knowing what he was up to but suspecting it wasn’t particularly legal, Elena is shocked find herself back in the story she was covering. As she looks to tell the story and reveal the truth, she winds up within a world of covert ops and political danger, keeping her on the radar of government agent Treat Morrison (Affleck). The more she finds out, the more danger she gets herself into. Rees writes with Marco Villalobos and directs here, while Tamar-kali composed the score. Supporting players include Onata Aprile, Julian Gamble, Toby Jones, and more. Bobby Bukowski handles the cinematography. This movie desperately wants to be a conspiracy thriller, circa the 1970s. It fails in almost every regard. Dee Rees’ script, co-written by Marco Villalobos, is an absolute incomprehensible mess. That makes Rees’ job as director almost impossible, which leads to any number of bizarre sequences. Rees and editor Mako Kamitsuna never once make sense of the mess. Worse, she leaves Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, and Anne Hathaway out on an island, preventing them from having anything interesting to do. Their performances are one note and disappointing, to […]