The Last Mark – An Agonizing Indie Action Thriller

In The Last Mark, after a young woman named Peyton (Fast) witnesses a mob hit, a seasoned assassin named Keele (Doyle) and his psychotic partner Doug (Cruddas) must track her down before she turns them in, but she proves to be the hardest mark to kill.

First off, Peyton has a grating voice. It’s unclear whether it’s the actress or the character but the way she is infantilized here is really bothersome and tiring. We’ve seen this before, it’s so old and kind of creepy. She is continually shown to be incapable of doing basic tasks, leaving viewers squirming in discomfort. This reviewer for one desperately wanted her to be a badass assassin but the filmmakers never seemed to realize how much interesting that would’ve made the film.

Instead, viewers are left with her being captive to the equally unlikeable Keele. His gruff demeanor is completely stock, and for those looking for any sort of psychological insight or development, it never comes. There’s nothing interesting about any of the characters for that matter. However, the biggest problem with the film by far is the dynamic between Peyton and Keele. While it is intended to be a captive/captor relationship, it feels so weirdly wrong in its portrayal, and the infantilization of Peyton adds an icky layer to the whole film.

But this is an action movie first and foremost, right? Well, barely. There’s not a lot of action to be had and whenever there is any, it’s badly shot and framed. The rest of the action feels hacky and something akin to the worst kind of low-budget film. There’s never a real sense of progression and things just keep going on without any payoff. It barely feels finished. Even for a low-budget film, there ought to be more effort on display. When it comes to action, one should know the basics of how to portray action scenes on film. All of this merely adds up to incompetence.

The whole film has an exploitative feel to it. It’s like the film doesn’t ever know what tone it wants to settle on therefore it merely tries to float in some in-between space which makes it feel awkward and gross. One feels like it’s a sign of the creative failure that one can never really get a sense of what’s going on from scene to scene or how it progresses into the next. Viewers are sure to alternate from boredom to annoyance to disgust while watching and it lacks even the basic components of competence to spare. There’s simply little that can be said about this film.

In the end, The Last Mark is a shrill and agonizing experience that is amateurish in a way that’ll make viewers re-analyze other films they’ve previously had preconceived notions on. There is nothing redeeming about this mess.

still courtesy of Epic Pictures Group

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Gabe Guarin

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