Last Flag Flying: Long may it wave

Last Flag Flying (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and crude remarks
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.17.17

This may be the most unusual road film I’ve ever seen.

The genre is characterized by a trip undertaken by two (sometimes more) individuals who initially don’t get along, and often bond — if only to a degree — by journey’s end. “Great truths” about the travelers are revealed along the way; the more thoughtful scripts also include perceptive social commentary, sometimes speaking to the human condition.

When another snag interrupts their melancholy journey, Sal (Bryan Cranston, right)
naturally drags his companions — Richard (Laurence Fishburne, left) and Doc (Steve
Carell) — to the nearest bar.

The approach can be straight drama, high comedy or a combination of the two. The best examples employ gentle laughter to illuminate human foibles.

Director Richard Linklater has co-scripted — with Darryl Ponicsan — a deeply moving road film that builds to an almost unbearably poignant conclusion. Last Flag Flying has much to recommend it, starting with a clever narrative that is punctuated by often hilarious dialogue. Linklater also draws deeply moving performances from his three stars, and equal mention must be made of the two key co-stars.

But the film is too long at 124 minutes, the pacing too deliberate, many of the slow takes too lingering. Whether in cars, bars, restaurants or trains, this is essentially a “talking heads” experience, and — no matter how well sculpted the drama — that’s hard to sustain for two full hours.

Which is a shame. Tightened by even 10 to 15 minutes, this film might have been a classic for the ages.

The story, set in 2003, begins when soft-spoken New Hampshire family man and former Navy Corps medic Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carell) unexpectedly shows up at the Norfolk, Va., bar owned by alcoholic former Marine Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston). Three decades removed from their shared tour in Vietnam, Sal doesn’t immediately recognize his former buddy; once past that snag, smiles abound.

Doc asks a favor; Sal doesn’t hesitate a blink before accepting. Doc drives them a few hours away, where they’re just in time to catch a church service led by Pastor Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), a mutual comrade-in-arms remembered as an unrestrained Marine tear-away. The unexpected dichotomy is almost more than the giggling Sal can stand.

Later, sharing a sumptuous meal prepared by Richard’s wife Ruth (Deanna Reed-Foster), Doc confesses the purpose for this reunion. He has just learned that his only son, a young Marine, has been killed in Iraq; Doc hopes that his two friends will accompany him on a road trip to attend the 21-year-old Larry Jr.’s burial at Arlington Cemetery. They agree.

This process begins with a brief “coffin ceremony” at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base, where military coffins are de-planed clandestinely, to avoid the public glare (a shameful media blackout orchestrated at the time by the Bush administration, in an effort to recast the Iraqi conflict as a “good news” story).

Everybody Wants Some: College daze

Everybody Wants Some (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, drug use, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Boys will be boys ... and it’s a wonder girls will have anything to do with them.

Texas-born writer/director Richard Linklater hearkens back to his cinematic roots with this new laid-back comedy, which he regards as a “spiritual sequel” to his career-making 1993 hit, Dazed and Confused. That film, set in May 1976, followed the antics of small-town high school kids during their final day of class; this one spends three days in September 1980, during the long weekend preceding the first day of college.

Having commandeered a table at the local disco, Jake (Blake Jenner, center) and his new
friends — from left, Finn (Glen Powell), Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), Dale (J. Quinton
Johnson) and Plummer (Temple Baker) — assess the field to determine which young
ladies are worth pursuing.

The goals — getting drunk, stoned and indulging in recreational sex — haven’t changed, nor has the execution: Although Linklater typically begins with carefully dialogued scripts, he encourages his cast members to expand and improvise, as they become more “in tune” with their characters. The result feels spontaneous and organic, like a well-rehearsed play that has grown from humbler origins.

That said, such riffing isn’t always successful. Many of the guys here feel goofily authentic, their conversation and antics what we’d expect from early ’80s college jocks. A few, however, are way over the top, the young actors in question trying much too hard. By the same token, some of the unstructured interactions sorta drift off into space, never really justifying their existence.

At just a few minutes shy of two full hours, Everybody Wants Some also starts to feel a bit tedious, its episodic nature gradually wearing out its welcome. Better that Linklater and editor Sandra Adair had trimmed more judiciously, and left us wanting more.

Even so, it’s hard to resist the film’s larkish charm, and that of its young cast. At its best moments — which is most of the time — Linklater’s unabashedly autobiographical ode to his own college experience is both fun and funny.

The setting is Southeast Texas State University, where incoming freshman Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner) has left his small-town roots to become one of the newest members of STU’s baseball team. That allows him the best of all possible perks: a room in one of the school’s two frat-like “baseball houses,” far removed from the cramped, apartment-like dorms in which most new students are shoveled.

Jake quickly finds himself one of the low men in a pecking order dominated by seniors McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and Roper (Ryan Guzman), who view it as their responsibility to squash the prima donna instincts of newbies who may have been star athletes in high school, but now are no more than scramblers amid peers who all were stars at their respective schools.