La dernière corvée

My absolutely favorite Jack Nicholson film has always and forever will be The Last Detail. I don't think he was ever better on the screen as William Baddusky of the United States Navy. I enjoyed his performance and the film itself on so many levels. Probably not surprising since the script was done by Robert Towne who would soon be teaming with Nicholson again for the critical and popular success Chinatown.

It's a simple story, not really any plot to the film. Two sailors, Jack Nicholson and Otis Young, both of them lifers in the Navy are stationed in Norfolk and get themselves an assignment to escort a prisoner to the Naval Stockade at Portsmouth. Of course with the per diem allowance for the two men and the prisoner and five days to travel in, Nicholson and Young are thinking of a mini-spree at government expense.

It comes to that and a lot more. the prisoner is newcomer Randy Quaid whose big crime is that he attempted to steal $40.00 from a charity collection box. For that he's getting eight years in military prison and a dishonorable discharge. A dishonorable discharge even today is not a good thing for one's resume.

As Nicholson and Young both remark, someone really stuck it to him. Let's face it what Quaid did in civilian life would probably be considered petty larceny and his jail time might be measured in days. Turned out it was the base commander's wife's favorite charity so it got stuck to him good. Sad because the indications we get is that Quaid was a troubled kid in civilian life and probably military service offered him a chance to straighten up and fly right.

It's done that for many others including Nicholson and Young who make it very clear even on this disagreeable detail they do like the Navy and like serving in it.

They've got five days to deliver Quaid to Portsmouth so the journey becomes quite the odyssey for the three of them up the Atlantic coast. The three men have a great chemistry between them, you get involved with their lives and really feel for young Quaid and his plight. Quaid gets shown a good time and maybe that's not such a good thing considering what he is facing.

The Last Detail is a nice realistic look at the military both its flaws and good points. A lot of similarity here in the issues raised to From Here to Eternity and if I mention The Last Detail in the same sentence favorably as From Here to Eternity, you know how good it must be.

I read somebody's comment that this film isn't "deep." I think that viewer missed a whole layer of the story. you have to keep in mind that this was written and produced during the vietnam war and released during the early months of Watergate.

The story is about these two working class sailors, who are completely disenfranchised, just "doing their job." They're good guys but in the end, don't lift a finger to stop a massive injustice. They don't even take the time to think about it, because they feel there's nothing they can do about it. They pay lip services to how wrong things are about the situation, but in the end they do what "the man" says and they're just as much to blame for the problem as the commanding officers above them.

Through the course of the film, the sailors meet a lot of "chatting class" folks who are mad at Nixon and discussing politics, and they meet Hari Krishnas who are chanting to change things, but nobody is really taking any ACTION. Everyone is pissed off at the injustice of the world but nobody does anything about it. It's about inaction. And that inaction slowly boils up in the main characters and turns into anger that brings the film to a sad end. (It's one of those great stories that gets you pissed off at the injustice in the world...)

Having said all that, on a more tangible level, the performances and scripting are full of emotion and Nicholson's and Quaid's performance are amazing and hilarious to watch. But this isn't really a comedy in the end...more tragic really (with some good laughs along the way).

Check it out!

Jack Nicholson is a performer with the rare ability to completely immerse himself in a chosen role and convince the audience of the stark reality of his performance. Playing Navy Signalman First Class Billy "Badass" Buddusky in Hal Ashby's 1973 film rendition of Darryl Ponicsan's novel, "The Last Detail" is a sterling example of that uncommon talent. Rough-edged but understanding, crude but compassionate, Buddusky and fellow "lifer" Gunner's Mate First Class "Mule" Mulhall (skillfully portrayed by Otis Young) are "detailed" as armed Shore Patrol guards to escort a young sailor, Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) from Norfolk, Va. to a naval prison in Portsmouth, NH in order to serve an eight-year sentence after being convicted at a court-martial of petty theft.

The five-day journey northward is an adventure for all three. Sympathizing with Meadows's plight, apprised of his utter naivete and realizing his sentence far exceeds the severity of the offense, Buddusky and Mulhall conduct their version of a cram course in traditional male rights of passage--ranging from a drunken spree in Washington, D.C. to duking it out with Marines in New York City and getting their charge sexually initiated with a Boston prostitute--if for no other reason than to give him some taste of what he will not be experiencing for a long time and to teach him in some small way to assert himself as an individual.

Darryl Ponicsan's novel (which hit the racks at practically the same time the film had been released--the book's ending is quite different and, to me, is much less believable than the film's) was initially hailed as a polemic against what many believed was the cold indifference of the military establishment. However, since that time, it has been judged more a compelling "slice of life" drama about the complexities of everyday human behavior and how it is shaped by our own decisions and by entities beyond our immediate purview. And, more importantly, it forces us to think about how our ever-more-complicated society is increasingly unable to find ways to help its young people constructively mark transition into adulthood.

"The Last Detail" is a sadly overlooked but superb blend of pathos, ribald bittersweet humor, hard-edged '70s realism and insightful and subtle human drama, one that brashly and subtly brought back many personal memories of my Navy hitch and a work that says something to all of us by merely focusing upon a small "detail" of a sadly overlooked and unappreciated decade that was alternately (and simultaneously) bleak yet hopeful.

The Last Detail by Hal Ashby is much like John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy in that they are both road trip movies as well as buddy movies. They are about friendships that forged in extreme circumstances and the effect that these experiences have on each character's lives.

In the last detail, an unfortunate seaman by the name of Meadows (Randy Quaid) is condemned to jail for eight years for a misdemeanor crime he was unable to even complete. Being caught with his hand in the cookie jar after a mere forty dollars, he is consequently transported from a naval base in the south to the naval prison in Portsmouth, Maine. The last detail of a few veteran naval officers, namely Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) is to transport this eighteen year old, soon to be prisoner up the east coast.

The three gentlemen have never met before and all seem to have different interests. Billy and Mule are after some welcomed time off from the suffocating life on the naval base, while Meadows is drowning in his own depression. Billy is more of a lenient presence, while Mule seems to want to do his duty first and then relax. Soon the men form a bond. This bond and their relationship is what carry the movie. Meadows is an innocent and modest teenager who found his way into the navy because of a shop lifting problem. However, after hearing his story and spending time with the boy, the two officers realize the ludicrous charges that have been brought against such an undeserving soldier.

They take pity on him and decide to make his last days of freedom ones in which he will cross every right of passage yet to be undiscovered and make them days that he will never forget. As they gradually open up to each other, they grant the prisoner a certain degree of freedom beginning with the removal of the cuffs in the beginning of the movie. They get him drunk in Washington, D.C., involve him in his first fist fight in New York City and help him lose his virginity in Boston. Beyond these rights of passage, the officers also relate to the emotional side of Meadows. They allow him to visit his mother. What the two officers did not realize is that the journey they would take would be reciprocal. They all end up taking their guard down.

One of the more poignant lines in the film is when Meadows refers to the officers as his beast friends. Although he has only known them for less than a week, the sad fact is that these men are probably the closest friends that he has ever had. Mule and Billy have had much more life experience and are well versed in the details and idiosyncrasies that life involves. They connect with meadows because before this trip, he had been yet untouched by the worse side of life. His general doe eyed demeanor drives home the fact that he really does not deserve the treatment that he's receiving. Upon leaving the prison, I don't believe that Mule and Billy are so much angry with the way the ascending officer treated them as they are with the situation that Meadows is now faced with. "We could have prevented this.

Nicholson's "Bad Ass" is a beautifully crafted piece of character. He cusses. He fights. He drinks. He's loud. No one else speaks Robert Towne's words better than Nicholson. In this film he overwhelms at every turn. In the bar scene, he shows brute anger and a desire for dominance. The scenes with a young Nancy Allen are delightfully witty because of Nicholson's schoolboy antics of getting a woman into bed.

It is the scenes with Randy Quaid (also wonderful) where Nicholson shines brightest. "Bad Ass" represents a paternal figure lacking in Meadows' life. He makes him a man by demanding he send back a hamburger if it's not cooked the way he likes it. He demands Meadows to stop crying and be a man. He demands Meadows to stand up for himself and fight when someone pushes his buttons. He demands Meadows to want to have sex, like other men his age. Nicholson's father figure image here is played off perfectly as Meadows sort of imitates things "Bad Ass" does. If Bad Ass has a beer, Meadows has a beer. If Bad Ass wants a woman, Meadows wants a woman. There's a secret trust between the two. It's unspoken, but it's there. That trust is broken in the end when Meadows tries to escape. It wasn't all a lie, Meadows just felt that it was time to stop learning and start moving.