The Last Stop

After a snowstorm, the roads are blocked and the highway patrolman Jason (Adam Beach) comes to the diner of his friend Fritz (Jurgen Prochnow) and advises his clients that they will only be able to follow their trips on the next day. Among the weird strangers, Jason meets his former sweetheart Nancy (Rose McGowan), who has just left her husband in Los Angeles. Along the night, without any communication with his base, Jason faces distressful and suspicious situations with the clients, and finds some corpses, indicating that among them there is a killer.

"The Last Stop" could be an average thriller, but the screenplay is simply awful. Most of the characters are despicable persons and the motives of the surprising serial killer are never disclosed, and the viewers have no further explanation why the killer decided to kill the guests. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Encurralados" ("Trapped")

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.

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.

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 also saw The Last Stop at the Moving Pictures Film Festival in Prince George. I have to confess, the only reason I went to see it is because I am a huge Callum Keith Rennie fan. And he didn't let me down. He gave a good performance of a rather unsympathetic character and provided about the only comic relief in the whole movie.

The movie itself is the usual 'lots of bad people trapped in a snow storm together' storyline, but it did have a couple of twists that kept me guessing. The characterizations were strong and the whole cast performed fairly well. The only problems I had with the cast was Rose McGowan. She was so cold throughout the movie that we didn't get any idea of her character's personality or motivations. Other than her and a few small problems with continuity, this was a well-written, well acted thriller.