The Last Drop

Let me start by saying I picked this movie up for $3 at a used book store. And frankly, I do not regret it. There is an interesting quality about this movie that leaves me satisfied with the movie experience. It starts with expectations. When your marquee actors are Billy Zane and Michael Madsen, no matter how high budget the DVD case would like you to believe it is, you know going in that it is a B-Movie. Kind of like anything with C. Thomas Howell in it. So if you go in expecting a Saving Private Ryan, that is your oversight, not the makers of this film. Clearly in the aerial shots and crash scene at the beginning, one gets a good idea as to the "budget". There is nothing quality about this movie except maybe the true events surrounding the plot. I'm a fan of art and art history and WWII provides numerous interesting stories about art theft and art rescue. However, whereas the quality of the movie stinks, it's at least interesting. Low-B actors, recognizable character actors from bigger movies (see Tommy Flanagan in Braveheart), bad accents, poor dialogue, and to make matters worse the movie can't decide what it is going to be. Initially it starts out as a serious war movie and by the end of the movie, it had tried to become a Guy Ritchie film. Somewhere in the middle as the Germans steal a truck, hard rock music starts playing and the whole tone of the movie changes. Regardless of how bad this movie is, it is still an enjoyable time waster just to immerse yourself in bad movie-making.

I know in the war and post war years the concept of the war-comedy genre was popular - and given the grim times the world faced in those times, it is understandable as to way - (i.e - think of the film one woman went to war). However the last drop is the most terriblest film I have ever seen.

For starters the story line was not strongly thought out, the acting in it was just and well the whole premise of the film was just too unbelievable. Clearly today's film makers have the ability to make decent war films but to have this sort of ridiculous story was almost making fun of war and its horrors and making fun of the resources that are offered to film makers today.

To have the characters chasing after treasure in the middle of war time - come on please! I know a lot of looting of priceless artifacts did take place by the Nazis but the fact that it was made out in the film as that was the entire reason why they were in the war was not realistic. The way the screenwriter and director portrayed the two female resistance workers was terrible - and making out with the sniper out of gratitude - excuse me but I don't think so - and not in the situation that they were. And the English actor who played the Nazi - he should stick to better movies like Gosford Park where he showed off his acting ability.

The other day i watched the war film Sophie Scholl - and even though it didn't have half the 'big' name actors in it and was foreign produced and acted it was the most brilliant film I have seen for awhile and the fact that stupid stupid films such as the last drop (more like the last war film for these film makers) are made, do not do justice to the real stories and real suffering that the occupied countries went through when the Third Reich was in power.

DO NOT SEE THIS FILM.

This could have been a good film if only people had taken it's production a bit more seriously. We see several clips of a Horsa Glider being towed over to Holland. On take off it is towed by a 4 engine Short Stirling, then its being towed by a twin engined DC3 Dakota (C47). As they cross the Dutch coast it is being towed by a Handley Page Halifax!

The CGI is poor compared with other recent films, and continuity is a joke. The glider in the air has RAF roundels which on the ground become French! The glider in the air has RAF roundels which on the ground become French! How can so much money be spent on films only to have such stupid mistakes? It doesn't stop there what with a very modern looking truck being used in one sequence and later a very poorly disguised Antonov AN-2 trying to look like a JU52 on floats. The countryside and settings look very little like Holland...its almost an insult to our intelligence and sad when you realise that it wouldn't have taken a great deal to get it right.

Lastly, is it meant as a gritty heist movie, a gritty war drama or a bit of a romp? I got the feeling that the makers of this film changed their mind on a daily basis. If they had only stuck to their original idea I might have found it more believable.

For me it was when Michael Madsen made his first appearance, probably fresh from the set of the mega-hit Bloodrayne sporting a look that could best be described as a biker dressed in uniform.

This movie is a 6/10 only because it isn't boring. Horrible acting by most of them and Billy Zane must have been reading the 0's on his paycheck rather than the script cause he was the worst. Oddly though his is the first Canadian character in a long time that talks fairly authentically, at least for a Midwestern. Only problem is his character is from Ontario so thats like giving a southerner a New York accent. The movie constantly reminds us he is Canadian by him saying "Eh" nonstop. His character has nothing but one liner jokes I had expected this movie to be a serious war movie ala "The Great Raid" but it could be confused for a TV movie.

This movie started off OK but then decided the Nazis were too evil so turned them into good guys I swear! How sad is it when a war movie loses the courage to paint bad guys and makes them all likable (even the greedy fat guy).

I suppose the entire cast and crew voted for this 9.1/10 rating cause no way would anyone vote that after seeing this.

THE LAST DROP could have been a better WW II film had the writer and director decided on the focus. The directorial choices vary from very fine (mixing black and white grainy shots from war footage with stagy though competent settings in color) to questionable (allowing a musical score including steel guitar music and contemporary sounds to intrude into a time when such instrumentation was not even known) to mediocre (allowing the actors to be caricatures instead of players in a tense drama).

Essentially the story is set before Christmas with the dropping of troops via gliders into Holland to secure a secret mission involving looted Nazi treasure. The Germans are fast-driving to capture it and send it to Berlin before the Allies land. The British team is determined to maintain custody of the goods until war's end. And then of course there is a group of self-promoting Germans who simply want to capture the treasure for their own reward. Not a bad set of conflicts, but the film's problems are centered on some bad casting choices that prevent the momentum from being as relentlessly forward as good war films should. Some of the cast members look so much alike that it becomes difficult to determine just who is who: in one case this is intentional as the plot reveals in its ending, but in most cases it is a problem due to cramped dialects, stiff acting, and over the top parody. With the exception of Billy Zane and Michael Madsen there are no big names here and in many ways that is a good thing because the two stars are the weakest characters.

Though the plot outline has possibilities - what is war but greed under different names - the mixture of ribald humor and gut-wrenching realism fail to make the story work. Grady Harp