Das letzte Kommando

Often regarded as a comedy-drama, 'The Last Detail' always stood out to me as a pure drama. It tells the story involving a group of Navy officers: a young and meek officer (Randy Quaid) steals some money but gets caught; the two others (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) are to take him to prison. They (especially Nicholson) get somewhat attached to the boy when they see how young (ie.: don't know much of the world) and weak he is and decide to show him how to be a man before putting him away.

A look at the cast/crew shows how promising the film is. Hal Ashby is a fine director, whose films I always like/love (except maybe for 'Coming Home', which often gets too preachy and melodramatic); the screenplay is done by Robert Towne, the same guy who would later do 'Chinatown'; and the leading actor is Jack Nicholson, one of cinema's greatest actors.

Speaking of Jack Nicholson, he is just brilliant here. His character, 'Bad-Ass' Buddusky, is the type of character he is at best with: sarcastic and irreverent even when serious, yet very smart and caring in his own way. He acts as a father figure for the young Meadows (Quaid), trying to lift his mood and have him something to remember and be happy before having to face the harsh conditions of prison. Quaid and Young, alongside the supporting characters, end up overshadowed by Nicholson's performance, but they too make a great work with their characters.

As typical of a 70's and/or Hal Ashby film, 'The Last Detail' has great photography and is strangely comfortable to look at. The movie is very realistic too, with both situations and characters being very believable and sympathetic. The characters are very fleshed out and developed, making it difficult not to like or remain indifferent towards them. I've also heard that the way Navy/Marine officers are portrayed are also very close to the real thing, without forcing their portrayal as a way of criticism of the armed forces, which many directors would jump at the chance to do (specially considering the time this movie was made). In truth, I didn't feel that the film was a critique of the military like many say.

My only complaint on the movie is that it's supposed to be a comedy too. Yes, there are awkward situations and Jack Nicholson's typical rebellious way of dealing with everything; but the movie tends to make them more interesting than actually funny. Not that I'm saying this is bad; 'The Last Detail' is a remarkable movie in every aspect and one of the best pure dramas I've seen.

Don't let the fact that the DVD cover makes this movie look like gay porn keep you from seeing it.

Director Hal Ashby made a string of unfussy but very, very good films throughout the 1970s, and "The Last Detail" is one them. The story doesn't sound like much: two Navy officers are assigned to escort a third to the prison where he will be serving time. Along the way, the requisite male bonding ensues, and the older, jaded officer (Jack Nicholson) has a chance to reflect upon his own fortune and misfortune and be a sort of father figure, for better or worse, to his young and troubled charge (played extremely well by Randy Quaid).

Like all of Ashby's films, "The Last Detail" challenges things like duty and institutional authority, which made Ashby one of the most vocal of the anti-establishment directors from a volatile period of American history. But also like all of his films, it poses challenges in a low-key, non-confrontational way, without sacrificing its bite.

Well done.

Grade: A

My absolutely favorite Jack Nicholson film has always and forever will be The Last Detail. I don't think he was ever better on the screen as William Baddusky of the United States Navy. I enjoyed his performance and the film itself on so many levels. Probably not surprising since the script was done by Robert Towne who would soon be teaming with Nicholson again for the critical and popular success Chinatown.

It's a simple story, not really any plot to the film. Two sailors, Jack Nicholson and Otis Young, both of them lifers in the Navy are stationed in Norfolk and get themselves an assignment to escort a prisoner to the Naval Stockade at Portsmouth. Of course with the per diem allowance for the two men and the prisoner and five days to travel in, Nicholson and Young are thinking of a mini-spree at government expense.

It comes to that and a lot more. the prisoner is newcomer Randy Quaid whose big crime is that he attempted to steal $40.00 from a charity collection box. For that he's getting eight years in military prison and a dishonorable discharge. A dishonorable discharge even today is not a good thing for one's resume.

As Nicholson and Young both remark, someone really stuck it to him. Let's face it what Quaid did in civilian life would probably be considered petty larceny and his jail time might be measured in days. Turned out it was the base commander's wife's favorite charity so it got stuck to him good. Sad because the indications we get is that Quaid was a troubled kid in civilian life and probably military service offered him a chance to straighten up and fly right.

It's done that for many others including Nicholson and Young who make it very clear even on this disagreeable detail they do like the Navy and like serving in it.

They've got five days to deliver Quaid to Portsmouth so the journey becomes quite the odyssey for the three of them up the Atlantic coast. The three men have a great chemistry between them, you get involved with their lives and really feel for young Quaid and his plight. Quaid gets shown a good time and maybe that's not such a good thing considering what he is facing.

The Last Detail is a nice realistic look at the military both its flaws and good points. A lot of similarity here in the issues raised to From Here to Eternity and if I mention The Last Detail in the same sentence favorably as From Here to Eternity, you know how good it must be.

Though the film's storyline diverges from the more existential theme of the Darryl Ponicsan novel from which it was adapted, 'The Last Detail' was, is, and remains the only real deal film about navy enlisted men. Hollywood never did sailors so well as it does them here.

If you don't care for testosterone-impelled behavior, parochial esprit de corps, scatology, and profanity - well, never mind: the dialogue here is true-to-life sailorese, and the hi- and low-jinks antics are too. If you can't take the heat, get the hell out of the galley.

Gritty cinematography of the earthy, low-rent world of enlisted sailors (for example, watching the "decent peoples' world" pass by the filth-streaked windows of a worn, smelly railway car) communicates much of the characters' experience of life in the margins and their ethos and how they came by them. The Johnny Mandel score is often oddly, and too-cheerfully irrelevant, though one suspects its breezy take on nautical marches and ditties was meant to be satirical; but it's often discordant with the serious themes - 'the individual versus society', existential choice and haplessness - of 'The Last Detail'.

In a role that could have been tailor-made for him Jack Nicholson's acting is perhaps the best of his career - a superior foreshadowing of his later turn in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. But without Otis Young as his fellow seasoned petty officer and Randy Quaid as the naive young, brig-bound seaman, Nicholson's tour de force would have fallen as flat as a flathat (for all you landlubbers: the navy blue "Donald Duck" US NAVY-ribbon bound winter sailors' hats, which sailors hated intensely, that were abolished in the early 60's).

Politically correct left-leaning folks should discover in Gunners Mate 1st Class "Mule" Mulhall a perfect example of an African American professional sailor: serious yet fun-loving; jocular but no-nonsense; competent and quietly self-assured: in short, a sailor among sailors, a man among men. I know because I served, and when the chips were up or down no sailor cared about color, and each of us cared only that he or she could rely, or not, on our shipmates. Though it has its arcane rules, written and unwritten, the naval service is remarkably egalitarian in opportunity - and it is so without all the hue and cry of civilian "social consciousness".

Though it's a marvel of a film, 'The Last Detail' could not cram into its running time all the humor and pathos of the eponymous, tough-tender Ponicsan novel (in which petty officer Mulhall's character looms quite a bit larger than he does in the movie, and Billy Buddusky's reflexive resorting to signalling with his Signalman's semaphoring hands spells out apt clues to his worldview); and the novel (which, incidentally, I read while on active duty, before the film had been made) turns out with a dramatically different ending - with a true denouement absent from the screenplay's conclusion that left me wanting, and which is the film's only grave, if quibbling, flaw. But the screenplay incorporates characters, scenes (Carol Kane as the careworn young whore providing Quaid's Seaman Meadows his first experience of coupling), and dialogue that might also have helped the novel to better flesh out and plumb the characters and their experience. Small matter, really: the book and the film contrast and complement each other perfectly.

Anyone considering enlistment should see 'The Last Detail' because it tells enlisted sailors' life like it is. If you can take life like it is, with or without the occasional fix ('An Officer and a Gentleman' anyone?) of kitschy, unrealizable romantic fantasy, then 'The Last Detail' is your meat.

The Real Deal. Chow Call, Chow Call - All hands lay to the messdeck! Take all you want - Eat all you take. Down to 'The Last Detail'.

Ever since 9/11, you hear a lot of fluff in the press about our "heroes" in the armed services. Typically they are portrayed as wide-eyed, short hair enthusiasm and commitment machines. It's a nice image, but the real version is much more human, much more interesting and much more likable.

I was a naval officer for seven years. The best part of my service was the wonderful opportunity to get to know the many men and women who make up the enlisted ranks of our armed services. They tend to be from the rural towns of the south and Midwest or the inner city ghettos. Most of them were average students with limited financial prospects. The ones who succeed in the ranks enough to stay for 20 years do so because the Navy is the first place where they belong. And because they enjoy the job. They get good at it and they believe that what they are doing is much more rewarding and challenging than their friends back home.

They also love to party. To drink and to chase skirts and raise hell. They feel entitled to and they are almost always out for a good time without hurting anyone. They also love to mentor the younger sailors to show them how to survive and how to enjoy the time in.

The details of this movie are wonderful. The dreary time in transit, ironing uniforms and staring at the walls. Wanting to be at sea, something that few people can imagine until they've done it. The thrill of a few days per diem to blow in bars. The resignation of being a lifer and above all the nature of Navy friendships.

Jack Nicholson's character and Otis Young's are not natural friends. They probably wouldn't have time for one another in any other line of work, but having the shared experience of being First Class Petty Officers at the same base is enough for them to be comfortable with one another and to enjoy each other's company. They also both take to the young kid and they both know how to treat him because they've been doing it for so long.

I can't tell you how real these characters were to me. I can's say "Oh Jack reminds me of GSM1 So-and-so and Otis reminds me of QM1 Whatshisname". IT's too real for that. They both remind me of many, many people I had the good fortune to work with.

And they are flawed. They lack the guts to spare Randy Quad from this injustice. They don't even stick together on the way back to Norfolk, probably because they know they did something less than wonderful to the young man. They are indoctrinated but not inhuman.

I also enjoyed seeing shades of Jack's work in "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest". Bad-ass is kind of a rough draft of his McMuphy. This is Jack at his finest.

Randy Quaid's performance made me feel a little bit sad. Not just for the character, but for the actor. He had so much talent back then and somehow he got pigeon holed playing big dopes. He certainly has as much talent as his younger brother but not the leading man looks. I don't think I'll ever see him in the Vaction movies without cringing. He should have become so much more. (Of course his other work is entertaining but it's never touching or through provoking as it is here.) And Otis Young was terrific too. I'm not sure why he never got more good roles, but this is something to be proud of.

In short, this is the most realistic navy movie I've ever seen. If you're thinking about enlisting, or if a loved one is, this is not a bad way to see what the navy does to a man-good and bad. And it's funny that they do this without ever setting foot on a vessel.

I want to find the poster and hang it on my walls next to my commission.