User reviews

Nope, the 5th grader's screenplay would be better!

"The Last Thing Anyone Wanted" should've been the title of this film. What was seasoned writer and director Dee Rees on when she wrote and directed this, and did no one else proofread this convoluted plot ridden excuse for a screenplay?

Ugggh, 2 hours of my life I'll never get back! Watch the trailer and you've seen the entire movie - and the trailer makes more sense than the movie if that tells you anything. What a waste of talented actors. A shame this will be a thorn on their resume, I hope they got paid well. NOTHING in this film made any sense. The only thing I got out of this film was to take up smoking; Hathaway was successful in advertising cigarette smoking.

The only reason I'm not giving this film a 1/10 is +1 for the actors and +1 for the producers not posting fake/paid reviews - yet. Thus it's a 3/10 from me

I really wanted to like this movie because the trailer was great and it set the bar high. About a third of the way in I said to my wife, "what the hell is going on?" She didn't know either. Another third into the movie and I repeated the question, which went unanswered because my wife was asleep. Bored by the meandering plot lines that never seem to unite. So, I wasted a few hours of my life watching this but the good news is my wife got an hour or more of decent shut eye.

Dee Rees, the director of the much acclaimed "Mudbound", offers up her second Netflix collaboration - "The Last Thing He Wanted", a crime thriller based on Joan Didion's novel of the same name. The cast includes such stars as Anna Hathaway, Willem Dafoe & Ben Affleck, also Rosie Perez and Toby Jones. What could possibly go wrong? Apparently a whole lot.

"The Last Thing He Wanted" is, in a certain way, an annoying experience. Its main strength are the acting performances, the highlights include a content and contained lead performance by Anna Hathaway and a well fitted supporting role for Willem Dafoe. Rosie Perez and Ben Affleck were good as well, but, frankly, they weren't given enough to do to really stand out. It's a mildly frustrating watch because the star-studded power seems wasted on an otherwise weak and confused movie. Or rather the story and screenplay. I can only suppose it's an unsuccessful adaptation of the aforementioned novel. Visually, "The Last Thing He Wanted" is shot very well (and uses a peculiar aspect ratio, but with no complaints), looks and sounds like an above average Hollywood-type thriller. But all of that only matters so much on the background of the script which feels like a lot of things and almost none of them are good - it's disjointed, unfocused, doesn't stick together, doesn't carry the weight it should (I'd take a guess though that the filmmakers think otherwise) and just disappoints altogether. While watching I felt like each scene is somehow to be taken on its own terms, every time the previous one didn't feel important much anymore. What I'm trying to say is that a rather simple story telling has gotten all tangled up here and it's a huge black shadow hovering over "The Last Thing He Wanted".

Despite the quite enormous flaw/s, "The Last Thing He Wanted" possesses one or two redeeming qualities. I'll go ahead and assume, probably correctly, that this movie is going to be a bore to a lot of people, but if the viewer commits, it's possible to squeeze out an eyebrow-raising evening 5/10, which is the most I can give it with a clear conscience.

I just created an account specifically for this review. That's how bad, pointless, and confusing this movie was. I felt something in my soul that said I had to let the world know.

Plot: Bad/Pointless Continuity: None Doesn't tie everything in at any point Feeling: Am I dumb, did I miss something, or is this movie actually this bad?

This film has prompted several questions Who OK'd this film to be released? Will I ever forgive myself for wasting 2 hours of my life?

While the answer to the first question is obviously "an idiot", the answer to the second question is actually "yes!".

There's a silver lining. In wasting my time watching this film, I managed to come across film reviews and ratings of this movie afterwards. I got so much joy and laughter (which I did not receive from watching the movie) out of reading how bad the movie was that I actually am happy I watched it. For every second of misery I endured watching the movie, there was a moment of happiness reading a review of an equally disgusted viewer. The ONLY reason to watch the movie is to laugh at the reviews after!

'The Last Thing He Wanted' begins with a long narration from Anne Hathaway's character. We have no context for what she is saying, and what she is saying is so incredibly dull that it is nearly impossible to focus on what she is saying for the lengthy duration she rambles on for. This sets the tone for a truly shocking film. I can't remember the last time I saw a film so pretentious and full of itself, while concurrently being of such a low standard.

Where do I begin with the faults this movie contains? The story is all over the place for starts. It darts around like a headless chook running in circles and never settles down for a moment. The movie asks you to follow every little detail hidden in the dialogue, but the dialogue is so bland and uninteresting that is an immensely tough task to do so. If you haven't completely lost interest in this film 15 minutes in then you have the patience of a saint.

I looked up the book this is based on. From what I can tell people were not overly fond of this book. Which begs the question why it got a film when so many incredible books out there have failed to do so. Who read this rambling mess of a story and thought it would make for a great film? Also how did they get a cast as good as they did with a script this bad? I know Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck's careers have fallen off a cliff, but surely not to this extent? I really did not enjoy this film and even though it's free to watch on Netflix I would suggest it is not worth your time or effort.

I just have no idea what the story is about. I don't even understand what the leading characters are doing, or indeed who they really are! The events are confusing, and the characters are poorly developed.

Im usually not a look at my phone while watching a movie kind of person but from the beginning of there movie I found myself looking at my phone. Buy the time out was over I thought that maybe I missed a few key parts because I had no idea what the movie was all about. Came to see what others thought and I see that I didn't miss anything because others were just as confused as I was. This movie feels like they forgot to shoot some scenes that told more of the story. Maybe there's more answers in the book This was based off of.

Just could not make any sense of it. One of the worst films that I've ever seen.

Just don't do it. Don't convince yourself to watch it because you think "it can't be that bad...."

IT REALLY IS

I've never written a review before and wanted to up the rating on this one as I read the other reviews. I totally understand why people find this movie incomprehensible, I think the producers/director assumed people would know about the Iran/Contra days of the 80s, when US Government sold weapons to Iran to fund large scale killings and related militia activities in Central America. This became a sprawling and almost incomprehensible web of crap that consumed America in the 80s. Read about the rape/murder of the Maryknoll nuns, CIA cocaine smuggling to LA, Freeway Ricky Ross (no, not the rapper, but the guy the rapper took the name from and got sued by), the Kerry Commission (yes, Senator / Prez / Married Well John Kerry), Ollie North, Charles Schultz (now of Theranos fame!), and a whole bunch more crazy stuff. Much the current poverty and migration from Central America today is partially rooted in this story, and the many crazy and horrible stories that came before in this region. So, apparently this movie assumes you'll know the story / follow the plot, and if you do it's not a bad flick.

I always check the rates on IMDB before watching a movie in streaming. However this time I followed my wife's decision because she said it was "my kind of movie": political drama/thriller. Big mistake. Terrible script, robotic performances from Hathaway and Afleck. Willem Dafoe was a wasted talent on this one. Do not bother.

Just tonight I watched "The Last Thing He Wanted" with my family -- two younger siblings (16 and 18) and my mom (60). All four of us loved it. We were all talking happily about it after it was done. I had heard vaguely that it was getting bad reviews, but I hadn't actually read any. Now I'm on IMDb and I'm seeing all these one star reviews. I decided to make an account just to give my own opinion.

This movie is hard to follow. That's something everyone here is mentioning. But it seems to me like it wasn't THAT hard to follow. It's only about as convoluted as "The Big Sleep" or "Funeral in Berlin," which don't have rock bottom ratings.

That makes me think that this film just hasn't found its audience. I think a lot of people came here looking for action scenes, and got bored with this mainly dialogue driven movie (which was adapted from a novel). I found the movie very tense and thrilling throughout, so that the action scenes came as exciting escalations of the ever-present tension. But if the dialogue is not hooking you, you probably won't be feeling the tension much in the first place.

And the dialogue is a big thing. I have no doubt I wouldn't have been able to make sense of the movies without having the subtitles on. The characters talk fast and reference a lot of names (of places, people, and organizations). It expects you to keep up with this rapid fire pace. To be fair, this is just one of the pitfalls of adapting a novel. There are so many words, and if the actors spoke more slowly they'd never be able to fit the whole story in one movie.

I think the pacing was truly admirable. Most novel adaptations either have dumb time-skips where you miss important information, or have summary-style scenes where all the interesting dialogue is cut out to leave the plot-relevant information, or have scenes that plod on much longer than they should. "The Last Thing He Wanted" goes at a clip, really rushing from thing to thing. But each point is actually made very well in each scene, and the rush of it becomes pretty exciting. You have no time to stop and think while your life is at risk, and you have no idea who to trust. This ends up demanding a lot of focus from the viewer. I think my family enjoyed it so much because we saw it as kind of a game. We pointed things out to each other and tried to make connections between things.

I can understand reviewers who were unpleasantly surprised to find that there isn't much action here, and that the fast-paced dialogue requires a lot of concentration. That isn't everyone's cup of tea. But I also get the sneaking suspicion that people are just frustrated that this movie doesn't spell everything out about the historical background. It frustrates me because the historical background is one of the most urgent things about the movie.

Some movies will start with the ABCs because they know their audience doesn't know much about the subject matter. For instance, movies like "Hotel Rwanda" are like an introduction to their subject matter. It doesn't assume that you know very much about the Rwandan genocide. It wants to tell you about it.

But if you're always starting from basics, you never get anywhere. Sometimes there are important things to say AFTER you've learned all the basics. That's the kind of movie "The Last Thing He Wanted" is. It expects you to have some familiarity with the political background.

And believe me, you should WANT to know more about the political background. Because this stuff is the background of our own lives today. This movie is basically about how America behaves as a superpower -- how it acts at home and how it treats other countries around the world. The way it acts today is not much different. If you try to learn a bit about the background and then keep that in mind while you watch this movies, YOU WILL LEARN SO MUCH THAT IS SO IMPORTANT! Of course, I can't guarantee that you'll like it. But this information is valuable in its own right.

Basically, the backdrop for this movie is the Reagan administration's involvement in Central America and the Caribbean. The Cold War was still on, and a group of left-wing Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua. Reagan opposed this government and backed anti-Sandinista "Contras". He supplied these Contras with arms and funding, and also spoke out publicly in their favour. The problem is that the Contras, to quote Wikipedia, "engaged in a systematic campaign of terror" -- these were not just freedom-loving citizens who opposed leftism, but brutal armies. At the same time, the US government was getting involved in similar ways in El Salvador, Grenada (a Caribbean island), and many other places across the world.

Besides the moral problems associated with backing the Contras, there were also the nefarious ways that the government did it. It was not by any means a straight-forward affair -- the CIA and other government agencies acted in almost total secrecy, and a lot of shady dealing got mixed in with the declared actions the Reagan administration was taking.

This is the central dynamic of "The Last Thing He Wanted." The shady backroom stuff can't be disentangled from what the government is officially doing. Anne Hathaway's character, Elena, is a journalist who documents the things that the government wants kept secret. Early on in the movie, Ben Affleck's character debates with another Washington guy about whether or not to "allow" her to keep doing her journalism there. The other guy thinks it will help to make things seem more unstable in Nicaragua, and thus give legitimacy to American operations there. Affleck's character, Treat, thinks it's too risky to have the truth come out.

The question hanging over the whole film is, who is out to get who? When Elena (Hathaway) starts to get involved in her father's smuggling operation, she doesn't know who is connected to the Sandinistas, who is connected to the Contras, who is perhaps only trying to make money off of drugs, and who is connected to the US government. For people connected to the US government, we have to wonder, do they know Elena is a journalist and care about that, or is she only relevant because of the smuggling thing?

Basically, everyone's motives are completely tied up with the political situation at the time. But, let's be real, the world hasn't changed that much. It's exactly the kind of high-handed treatment of other countries which are, in theory anyway, sovereign, which makes China, Russia, and other countries so recalcitrant about accepting US leadership. If this is how the US treats Nicaragua, why wouldn't they treat China the same way?

It's also the same attitude which led to the (second) Iraq war. Now, I need hardly remind you that the Iraq war is a huge reason why people are so jaded about politics today. People were lied to on a massive scale, and bought into a costly and painful war over what turns out to have been nothing important. It has given both Republicans and Democrats a sense of powerlessness and cynicism (one of the things which helped elect Trump). Moreover, American prestige has never recovered, and the international well of goodwill for America has become very shallow.

Well, that's my little history lesson (and I don't claim to be an expert on any of this stuff). But it gets to the heart of what matters today. The world still works the way it does in "The Last Thing He Wanted," and unlike a movie, you can't just give it one star and tune it out.

I think some of the poorly rated reviews are a little unfair, but the ending answers a lot of questions about the plot, so stick with it.

However, the main question that I had - not satisfactorily answered - is why she went on this journey at all?

My god was this horrible. The plot never materialized and, while the cast of all stars was great to see, it lack direction. Something I never thought I would see with the talent and director.

Most movies have some underlying moral or idea that they are trying to get across but even that was missing (which is something I rather like but in this instance I thought that maybe it would be what made the whole thing come together.)

Bottom line, just don't waste your time. If you do you only have yourself to blame... You've been warned

The cast was promising. The first 5 minutes of tension as well. Then...what the hell? What was this movie all about? I love Anne Hateway but this was a bad decision from her to accept this role. Maybe she didn't read the script before she has signed the contract or the money was too big to say no, who knows. I wonder why almost all movies made in the last couple of years are crap boring low quality material? If i go back and see a list of films in any year of the 80's i can count more excelent movies in a single year then in the last 15 years together. Hollywood writers are more stupid now or they want us to be this low? Netflix. Your name is equal now to very low rated boring movies.

What did I watch? Couldn't catch the story.. I really tried! Caos movie and the ending...what was that?

These days I get more and more the impression that the producers don't read scripts anymore - who the hell gave this script a green light? And why!? The story is not very interesting and the execution just adds up to an impression of a redundant and boring movie. Also what's up with those fine actors!? How William Defoe could get involved in this movie!? If he didn't read the script he should fire his agent. Anyway, to be more precise, i renamed the title of the movie to The Last Thing I Wanted, and put it on my personal blacklist that's called "never watch or touch it again". But for certain from a certain perspective it is an achievement to make such a bad movie with that kind of skilled cast... Verdict: one of those fast produced movies that are made these days to fill the airtime of some paychannel. My guess: The Last Thing He Wanted will be faster forgotten than produced.

Let's just say You'd think you'd left the room and missed 30mns of the movie after watching it.. A lot of missing piece and lack of clarity/ explanation.. ultimately you're going to ask yourself wtf did I just watch? Unless you know the story/ read the book already, dont bother watching this!!

This film is a moody throwback to 70s and 80s political thrillers and it's set in the Nicaraguan controversies and such, mostly stuff of the Reagan era. At the same time, it's a character-driven picture and a tropical romance set in the world of international intrigue. So, yeah, there are a lot of moving parts, and Dee Rees takes the Michael Mann route of making the audience pay close attention to how the story unfolds without making it easy in the storytelling department. Anyhow, I managed to follow the plot and if you feel it's convoluted or silly you should consult Didion novel. Also it's an unofficial remake of Antonioni's PASSENGER with Anne Hathaway taking over the Jack Nicholson part. For me, it made sense for what it is - a backbone for a sweaty and highly stylized excercise in arty thrillers like they used to make them in the seventies.

Anne Hathaway is mesmerising in the leading role. Ben Affleck is good as the White House sleazebag involved with her. Toby Jones is a delight as an old semi-retired pimp who still knows how to create an intrigue. And above all else Bobby Bukowski does an impressive job as the director of photography. This film should be seen for his contribution alone.

Admittedly, it's an acquired taste but not the kind of film that should be hated with such passion. Check it out on Netflix and later on you can make a nice conversation by comparing it to Mark Neveldine's Panama which basically deals with same stuff but in a completely different production milieu and ambitions.

Now we both know the same amount of information about this movie and I watched it. Saying it's hard to follow is like explaining duck nuts. I can picture them in my mind but it isn't until I see them in real life that I don't comprehend.

Having read the bad reviews I nearly stopped this at the 20minute mark. I kept watching and really enjoyed it, with all the twists and turns. I get what some are saying about how it jumps but I think that is to reflect Elena'a hectic life before she finds her father is ill and she then takes over his one last job. Not sure if I liked it more because of the bad reviews and I had low expectations. I did find myself replaying in my mind the story, which for me is always a good sign.

Okay, I get it, most of you don't like this movie. That's fine for sure. But 'movielovers' who gave only one star to this flick and cry their eyes out because they can't understand the storyline, should find another hobby. The story is intriguing, the acting is great, as is the cinematography. Why so much hate?

I'm usually the guy that understands the movie on the fly and gets asked about it by the other. This movie made me feel stupid. I had to google an explanation of the movie, and still makes no sense to me.

What a mess! Waste of time, no continuity, script-wise, jumped all over the place. I said WTF is going on with this film? Skip it, IMO.