The Last Stop

This isn't a perfect film, nor a great film. But it's completely entertaining nevertheless.

"The Last Stop" has some mystery, some interesting characters, some good acting, some growling white wolves, and a huge amount of snow.

The same night I saw this movie, I watched "The Skulls," a big studio production. "The Last Stop" was far more suspenseful.

Rent it!

I had never even heard of this movie when I started watching it. I've always liked Adam Beach, so I figured I'd give it a try. It did badly at the theaters and it got bad reviews. So my expectations were low. It was a pleasant surprise though. Good job all around. It's similar to the unfunny "Fargo", but done in good taste.

When a winter storm comes on strong and forces the local police to close all the roads in the area, the guests at a Colorado restaurant/inn are trapped for the night. Little do they know, a team of bank robbers is among them, having planned to rejoin at this very inn after their crime to settle up. A double crosser makes a bad situation worse and people who have seen or know too much start dying. Who's the killer? Very nice mystery. Well-written and suspenseful.

I bought this on DVD without actually seeing it before. Just, boom, bought it just like that. I wanted to know if this film had originality with its "thriller" genre. It's not too far off either...

We have a set of "typical-stereotype" characters here, but if you expect that, then you can enjoy the characters to their full potential. Callum Keith Rennie has a small role, but as usual is quite phenomenal on screen, capturing your eye at all times. Winston Rekert is a good actor too in this dark film. The location and sets are brilliant and the imagery is interesting and different. But as for the story line, it is reasonably un-original, but it does hold your interest from begining to finish. The only downer is Rose McGowan's performance which can only be said to be a little "wooden" but perhaps this is what she intended for her character. Who knows. All I know, is that I did enjoy this film with the "who done it" theme and interesting quirky characters. Not half bad :)

At the time I posted this, 4 people in the comments section for "The Last Stop" saw the movie specifically because Rose McGowan was in it.

Count me as the fifth. Rose is a pleasure to watch in everything she does! The movie itself wasn't much to write home about. Some posters complained that nobody in the production had any idea what a snowstorm was. During the scene when they were attending to the injured Adam Beach character (who was shot and bleeding) all I could think about was ... close the door, it's freezing cold outside!

Rose has a couple of good scenes in the film - one of them in which she has an entire dialog with herself completely wordlessly, but we know exactly what she's thinking - this demonstrates that she has talent (as do some of her better films such as Jawbreaker, Scream, Devil in the Flesh). If she can get some better scripts, she'll go far.

DVD Note: For Rose McGowan fans, Rose's interview on the "The Last Stop" DVD is worth the price of renting/buying the DVD, even if you hate the movie.

This movie is neither very good nor very bad. It's good value for an undemanding evening's viewing from your nearest rental shop, but not the kind of thing you're likely to watch twice. It was a pity that the characters walked around in the snowstorm without adequate clothing, and with only the odd puff on the hands to show they were cold but maybe they breed them tough in that neck of the woods. The idea was a good one; a disparate collection of people trapped in a motel called 'The Last Stop' and slowly realising there is/are a crook(s) among them. As the snow falls heavily so the body count rises, but unfortunately I worked out early on whodunnit and was right, which annoyed me. I enjoyed it, but I think I was feeling lazy that night. With a little more effort, this could have been a much better film than it was, and I'd lay the blame for that right at the director's door. The actors all performed very competently.