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Last Flag Flying is a comedy/drama from the acclaimed director of Boyhood and Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater. It stars Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne, and Bryan Cranston as three friends from the Vietnam War who get back together when Carell's son dies in action.

Despite the serious subject matter, this movie is absolutely hilarious. Cranston is absolute comedic gold. He hasn't been as funny as he is here since his Malcolm in the Middle days, and even then he may not have been quite as funny as he is here.

You would think going in that Carell would be the comedian here, but instead he is the dramatic anchor. Carell gives a surprisingly emotional performance, keeping the comedy to a minimum.

Fishburne is between the two, giving both comedy and drama when it's needed. Of the three it is hard to say which gives the best performance, but the edge must go to Cranston. The movie would probably be ten times more boring without him. There are scenes where Cranston single-handedly made the entire audience in my theater howl with laughter.

Last Flag Flying doesn't just give comedy however, it also tackles a great amount of issues that a lesser film would not have pulled off. This film explores the purpose of life, a subject that Linklater is very good at tackling. I would list some of the other issues it tackles, but if I did i would probably be here all day.

This movie is definitely not perfect. Near the middle it starts to drag, which is not that large of an issue, but for one or two scenes it is noticeable.

There is also a very manufactured conflict in the film. It feels like the writers stuck it in just so there was a conflict of some sort, but it easily could have been taken out and the movie would not have changed.

Another issue involves tone. There are a couple scenes where I genuinely could not tell if the film was trying to be serious or funny, but this, like all of the other flaws, is not that big of a deal.

Overall, I recommend Last Flag Flying because of both its hilarity and its drama. It is one of the funniest movie of the year and very profound, despite its flaws.

I give Last Flag Flying a B+.

Last Flag Flying (2017)

A great, low-key mixture of comedy and sadness. The more it went on the more I appreciated the situation, which unfolds like a play, and the ensemble acting, which is sharp. Bryan Cranston steals the show as the outgoing practical bartender veteran, but Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell are really spot on, too, in deliberately restrained ways. The film is trying to get to something here. At first it seems to be about some guys coming to terms with their time in Viet Nam, and how it compromised them then, with repurcussions ever onward. Then a slow critique of war and of the US approach to war, pretending everyone in uniform is always a hero, and fighting for questionable (or worse) causes. But an important third element grows-the actual meaning these men have for each other. They hadn't seen each other in decades, but their comraderie was almost unbroken because of some deep bond formed in wartime. And when it really comes down to it, even as they reject and hate the government for what they were forced to do, they still understood honor and respect. Including a love of country, somehow. That it's there, despite the flaws. Or something like that. (There are complications, and it would be easy and shameful to oversimplify.) The big point is: see this and give it time to settle in and warm up. The three men are deliberately an odd mix, and there are a couple of scenes that are rather too neatly contrived to make a fast point in the narrative, but overall it makes sense and is moving.

Vietnam vet Larry "Doc" Shepherd (Steve Carell) tracks down a pair of his old military friends: foul-mouthed and hard-drinking barkeep Sal (Bryan Cranston), and minister Mueller (Laurence Fishburne). Doc asks his two friends to accompany him to pick up the remains of his son, a Marine killed in Iraq. The three men set out on an odyssey to have the young man buried and to perhaps put some old ghosts to rest themselves.

This was based on the 2003 novel by Darryl Ponicsan, which was a sequel to his 1970 novel The Last Detail, which was memorably filmed in 1973 with Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and Randy Quaid. Linklater, who co-wrote the script with Ponicsan, decided to alter this follow-up in several ways, changing the character names and a lot of their back story, but the essential dynamic is the same. I enjoyed this film well enough, but as a big fan of The Last Detail, I spent much of this movie's runtime comparing it, and wondering what might have been had this been filmed 15 years ago and with the original film's cast returning to their roles (Otis Young passed away in 2001, before the sequel novel was published). Seeing at least Nicholson and Quaid return in those roles would have been really something else.

All that aside, this is still a largely enjoyable movie, with good performances and some nice, quiet character moments. The film seems to want to say something about veterans, and what they feel and how they deal with the rest of their lives, and how they end up viewing their country that they sacrificed for but who may have ultimately been lying to them. However, the script doesn't put these thoughts together in a clear enough fashion to be making any kind of definitive statement, but it may be the case that there really isn't one. It's odd to think that a movie set in 2003 is a period piece, but it is, and much is made of a visit by the three aging buddies to a cell phone store to check out the new-fangled technology. I'm curious how this movie will be viewed by actual Vietnam-era military veterans.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Last Flag Flying" (2017) has to say something about war and politics. It does not like either of them. What i did like about this movie was not its message, perhaps, but acting and writing. On its core its a 2 hours road movie with some war veterans who share some dark secret. There are no revelations at the end of they journey, but there is some sort of accomplishment of what they did on the road.

Overall, while "Last Flag Flying" isn't as good as Richard Linklater's previous movies (far from it), i did enjoy this picture entirely because of veteran actors doing good job and reading fine lines. This is a very anti-war movie without a war and a solid road drama.

Richard Linklater on Last Flag Flying: 'We're not meant to kill. We're not cut out for it' I agree. This film hits the right tone, respectful to the men who have served this country, while also pointing out the futility of war. The ensemble cast is brilliant: Steve Carell does such a subtle job with a great deal of poignancy and what can you say about Bryan Cranston's burned out veteran who is constantly looking for a good time, while Laurence Fishburne is marvelous as a pastor. Such a wonderful film... another great film by Linklater.