La última cena

It was a warm summer night and I was in the video store with my girlfriend. " Hey, this movie has that guy Bill Paxton in it, isn't that the guy you like? " I thought I had seen every Paxton movie out there but I was pleasantly surprised that there was one that I hadn't seen. So we rented it and even though Bill has a small cameo in the film, I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would. First the acting by the major actors is incredible and all the cameos by famous faces is fun to watch. Luke ( Courtney B. Vance ) is my favourite character in the movie. He seems to be a little more intelligent, a little more sinister and a little more angry than the rest of them. And it is his persona that I look forward to seeing in every scene. I looked forward to see what he was going to come out with next. What sick, twisted but convincing point of view that he would coerce his cronies into believing.

The story is about a few friends that are liberals at heart. They have their pretentious meals and drink their pretentious wine every night and talk about what is wrong with the world. Then Paxton comes into the picture and he changes everything.

This film didn't get a whole lot of attention when it came out, but now with Paxton's star clearly on the rise after Titanic and A Simple Plan and Cameron Diaz in the upper echelon of actresses, this film may appeal to more people. And you should do yourself a favour and make yourself one of those people. This is a great film. And besides the entertainment value, it really has something interesting to say. Deciding whether or not you agree with it is half the fun.

"The Last Supper" has a lot going for it. It makes fun of both ultra-right-wingers and of self-righteous left-wingers. Like "The Sixth Sense", it uses the color red to carefully dye the house of the roommates until it appears to be dripping in blood. It shows the corruption of the mind which will inevitably occur as a result of murder, and it displays the old saw about how the road to Hell is paved in good intentions.

Problem? The acting is pretty dry. None of the roommates are remotely likable, and their inevitable comeuppance loses some of its punch as a result. All of the characters, both the executioners and their prey, are excessively one-sided and flat, and no one is making the slightest effort to give any of their characters depth. The result makes the film a bit hard to sit through.

A bunch of liberal grad students (played by then unknown Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner and Coutney B. Vance) accidentally kill, at dinner in their house, a seriously deranged conservative (Bill Paxton) and bury the body. They figure they did the world a favor and invite ultra conservatives to their house, poison them and bury the bodies in the back yard. Among the victims (in cameos) are Charles Durning, Mark Harmon and Jason Alexander. Nora Dunn plays a policewoman investigating all the disappearances.

DARK dark black comedy but it's well-done. The script is sharp and witty and insults BOTH conservatives and liberals. With the sole exception of Vance (who's horrible) the acting is good and we see hunky Penner with his shirt off and walking around in his underwear. Well-directed too with a good eye to compositions and color. Great music score too. If you examine the plot closely there are loopholes and lapses in logic (like they bury about 10 people in their backyard and the neighbors never notice?) but still this is funny and makes you think. Ignored at the time of its release this made a little splash on VHS and deserves to be rediscovered.

A group of graduate students invite people (one at a time) for dinner and discussion. Their first guest in this movie is Zachary, a truck driver and Desert Storm vet who believes Hitler had the right idea, that Jews stole then and steal now, that the Holocaust was an exaggeration, that liberals accomplish nothing and they wouldn't be able to fight if they had to. He gets the others so riled that ... well, I won't say. But the students begin discussing the ethics of going back in time, if it were possible, to stop Hitler. Would they kill him or merely try to convince him he was wrong? Meanwhile, Zachary may be a suspect in a kidnapping.

Guest no. 2 is the kindly Rev. Hutchens, who believes the relatives of AIDS victims deserve no comfort. After all, those who got AIDS committed a mortal sin for which there should be no forgiveness. The dinners continue, with guests expressing more and more outlandish opinions. Some are not jerks, such as the sweet teenage girl who believes sex education should not be taught because family values are more important. And then there is wacko TV commentator Norman Arbuthnot, who may go into politics but probably shouldn't because he appears to be as demented as Hitler. Meanwhile, the students begin arguing more and more, while the garden never looked better. It's a special fertilizer they're using.

If this is a comedy, it's a very dark one. But I couldn't help laughing as ... continued improvements to the garden were made. And some of the weird opinions expressed were really funny. I didn't like the students--or their way of dealing with those who disagreed--but I did like Charles Durning a lot as the good Reverend, even if I didn't care for his opinions. And Bill Paxton did quite a good job as Zachary.

The best thing about the movie is that it gets a person thinking about other people's views and how bad it is to have unpopular opinions. We have freedom of speech in this country, and the right to our opinions, and this is what it means.

This is a film that can be viewed on two levels.

The first level is that of a straightforward black comedy. Five liberal students, who think they have the answers to all the world's ills, have their comfortable world invaded by a redneck racist who is invited in for supper after coming to the aid of one of the students when he has car trouble. Naturally there is a clash of politics and, after a violent argument, the racist is accidentally killed. They decide to bury him in their garden instead of reporting the killing. What follows is a continuation of an earlier debate they had been having; would people be justified in murdering someone if they knew he was evil? Their answer is yes, and soon they are inviting other rightwingers for an evening of dinner, debate and death. On the first level the film is okay.

It is on the second, more cerebral level, that the film really succeeds. The great irony is that the liberals become intolerant, revealing the dangers of political correctness and the very real possibility of a left-wing police state in which alternative views are crushed in the name liberal values.

A good soundtrack, some sparkling cameos by the dinner guests, and a knockout performance by Ron Perlman as the conservative commentator make this largely overlooked comedy well worth a gander.