Sundance 2020: The Last Thing He Wanted Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Every once in a while comes a film surrounded by so much hype before failing to deliver. Unfortunately, The Last Thing He Wanted is one of those films. Based on the book of the same name by Joan Didion, the film comes in with good intentions though is ultimately let down by its lack of a coherent story that will surely leave most audiences confused in spite of everything else it has to offer which is admittedly not much. It may be well-shot and decently acted but that’s not nearly enough to keep one’s interest as the film gives us little to no reason whatsoever to care. In reality, there appears to be signs of a better film within the final product, however, a lot of it seemed to be missing from film as if it had been left on the cutting room floor. 

For those unfamiliar with the source material (though it may do a better job at explaining the story than the film did), The Last Thing He Wanted follows an ambitious Washington D.C. area journalist named Elena McMahon (Hathaway) who was covering the Contras in El Salvador and its potential ties to the United States government until she was pulled from her assignment. Once her ailing estranged father Richard (Dafoe) fell ill, Elena took time off to tend to him. It was during this time that she learned that her father was an arms dealer working in South America. Elena would use this as an opportunity to get back to the area but little did she know, she would find herself in the middle of danger. Though all of these are supposedly connected, the film fails to do any of those subplots justice and only gets more convoluted and frustrating to watch as it went on assuming anyone cares at that point.

Despite the subpar plot and mediocre dialog (relying heavily on exposition), the acting in The Last Thing He Wanted was okay across the board. Hathaway was the only one who had anything to do as Elena. She was certainly committed, however, the character was incredibly dull. Affleck sleepwalks his way through the film as Treat Morrison, a politician who always seemed to show up in dicey situations. Meanwhile, Dafoe as Richard and Rosie Perez as Elena’s friend Alma were good in limited screen time.

In the end, The Last Thing He Wanted is a disappointment considering all involved whose destiny is most likely to disappear among the multitude of Netflix’s other content. 

*still courtesy of Netflix*

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.