Last Orders | |
---|---|
![]() Original poster | |
Directed by | Fred Schepisi |
Written by | Fred Schepisi |
Based on | Last Orders by Graham Swift |
Produced by | Elisabeth Robinson Fred Schepisi |
Starring | Michael Caine Tom Courtenay David Hemmings Bob Hoskins Helen Mirren Ray Winstone |
Cinematography | Brian Tufano |
Edited by | Kate Williams |
Music by | Paul Grabowsky |
Production company | Future Films |
Distributed by | Metrodome Distribution (United Kingdom) [1] Sony Pictures Classics [2] (Germany; through Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International [1] ) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 106 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom Germany |
Language | English |
Box office | $6.8 million |
Last Orders is a 2001 drama film written and directed by Fred Schepisi. The screenplay is based on the 1996 Booker Prize-winning novel Last Orders by Graham Swift.
The title refers to a pub landlord's last call and the final wishes of a dying man, in this instance Jack Dodds (Michael Caine), a south London butcher who greatly influenced four men over the course of his flawed but decent life. The quartet gathers to scatter Jack's ashes in Margate, where he had hoped to retire to a small seaside cottage with his wife Amy (Helen Mirren), a dream that was never fulfilled.
The four are: professional horse race gambler Ray Johnson (Bob Hoskins), aka Lucky, who fought beside Jack during World War II and has been his best friend since; former boxer Lenny (David Hemmings), who is always ready to settle an argument with his fists; undertaker Vic (Tom Courtenay) who acts as a buffer of sorts; and Jack's son Vince (Ray Winstone), a dealer of used luxury cars, whose relationship with his father never quite recovered when, as a young boy, he learned his real family perished in a wartime bombing and Jack and Amy took in the orphaned infant and raised him as their own.
As the quartet journeys from London by car to honour Jack's request, with stops at Canterbury Cathedral, the Chatham Naval Memorial, the hop farm where Jack and Amy met and a couple of pubs, they reminisce about their friend.
Amy is on a journey of her own to visit their daughter, June (Laura Morelli), who has learning difficulties and was institutionalized shortly after her birth fifty years earlier. Over the years Jack barely acknowledged her existence but Amy faithfully visited her weekly, even though June had no idea who she was or why she visited.
Through frequent flashbacks that stretch across six decades, the stories of the events that brought these people to this point in their lives slowly unfold, ultimately revealing the importance of friendship and love.
According to the film's official website, producer Elisabeth Robinson and screenwriter/director Fred Schepisi were preparing a feature film about Don Quixote in 1997 when she brought Graham Swift's novel to his attention. The two acquired the film rights to the book, and Schepisi began to work on his adaptation, completing the first draft of the script by February 1998. Schepisi met potential cast members and forged commitments with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, and Ray Winstone.
Nik Powell, head of the independent production company Scala, signed on as an executive producer and during the summer of 2000 brought in German-based Rainer Mockert and MBP to help with the financing. Principal photography began in October of that year and lasted nine weeks. Locations included the London areas of Peckham and Bermondsey, Eastbourne, Canterbury, Chatham, Margate, and Rochester. [3] Interiors were shot at the Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2001 and was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival, the Warsaw Film Festival, the Reykjavik Film Festival, and the London Film Festival before opening in the US on 7 December 2001. The film went into theatrical release in the UK on 11 January 2002.
The film grossed $2,329,631 in the US and $4,544,261 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $6,873,892. [4]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 79% based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "With a cast that includes some of the best acting talent in Britain, Last Orders is a rewarding character-driven ensemble piece." [5] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [6]
A.O. Scott of The New York Times observed, "For Mr. Schepisi . . . the principal challenge must have been how to translate the specific gravity of Mr. Swift's prose, with its multiple narrators and its stripped-down cockney lyricism, into the light and shadow of cinema . . . [He] has succeeded beyond all expectation . . . In the past Mr. Schepisi has used his elegant, unassuming visual sense and his instinctive feel for the idiosyncrasies of actors to open up the works of playwrights like David Hare ( Plenty ) and John Guare ( Six Degrees of Separation ). Last Orders, though quite different in theme and structure, shares with these films a quiet, amused wonder at the complexities of human character, and a reluctance to shoehorn them into narrative conventions or deduce obvious morals." [7]
Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an enervated, overly muted drama that should have been a lot livelier, considering the terrific cast" and added, "The actors do their best, particularly the impeccable Mirren, but Schepisi draws a shroud of chaste dullness over their scenes and lays on an energy-sapping score . . . The action moves constantly between present and past, which isn't a bad narrative scheme, but when it's done so frequently and deliberately, we feel as if we're looking over Schepisi's shoulder as he diagrams the whole story for us." [8]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it "a funny and touching film" and "a bawdy delight" and commented, "The acting is of the highest order, but the magnificent Mirren . . . is the film's glory and its grieving heart." [9]
Philip French of The Observer called the film "a moving study of the pleasures and obligations of friendship, and of facing up to a death and going on" and added, "Schepisi always handles actors sympathetically and here he has a perfect cast, most of whom can draw on their own and their parents' experiences. Without a touch of patronisation, they sink into their characters and never attempt to steal scenes from each other." [10] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said, "I sometimes felt more than a little coerced by the emotion being deployed" but added, "[C]lassy is indubitably what this film is - as well as intelligent, high-minded, and touching." [11]
Neil Smith of the BBC said "The plot may be on the mawkish side, but that doesn't stop Fred Schepisi's adaptation . . . being a gentle, affecting mix of road movie and soap opera. It helps that the Australian director has assembled a crack cast . . . Brian Tufano's handsome widescreen photography and Paul Grabowsky's excellent music turn this fairly parochial melodrama into something really rather special." [12]
Time Out New York described it as "Sober, even elegiac in tone, and elegantly shot" and added, " At the film's heart is an attempt to suggest the extraordinary nature of ordinary people, and if it fails to achieve profundity, it still makes for one of the most rewarding and authentic depictions of/tributes to the Cockney way of life in recent years." [13]
The film won the National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble. Helen Mirren won the London Film Critics Circle Award for Best British Supporting Actress. Fred Schepisi was nominated for the Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Seashell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.
Sir Michael Caine is a retired English actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over a career that spanned eight decades and is considered a British film icon. He has received numerous awards including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. As of 2017, the films in which Caine has appeared have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. Caine is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in five different decades. In 2000, he received a BAFTA Fellowship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Sir Thomas Daniel Courtenay is an English actor. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he achieved prominence in the 1960s as part of actors of the British New Wave. Courtenay has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Silver Bear, and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Emmy Award. He was knighted for his services to cinema and theatre in the 2001 New Year Honours.
Fierce Creatures is a 1997 farcical comedy film. While not literally a sequel, Fierce Creatures is a spiritual successor to the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda. Both films star John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. Fierce Creatures was written by John Cleese and directed by Robert Young and Fred Schepisi. The film was dedicated to Gerald Durrell and Peter Cook. Some scenes were filmed at Jersey Zoo, a zoological park founded by Durrell.
Dame Helen Mirren is a British actor. With a career spanning 60 years, she is the recipient of numerous accolades and is the only performer to have achieved both the American and the British Triple Crowns of Acting. Mirren has received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for portraying the same character in The Audience, as well as three British Academy Television Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards for her role as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) is an organisation that celebrates, supports, and promotes British independent cinema and film-making talent in the United Kingdom. Nominations for the annual awards ceremony are announced in early November, with the ceremony itself taking place in early December.
Raymond Andrew Winstone is an English television, stage and film actor with a career spanning five decades. Having worked with many prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Winstone is perhaps best known for his "hard man" roles, usually delivered in his distinctive London accent. The first of these was That Summer! (1979) for which he received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer. He rose to prominence starring as Will Scarlet in the series Robin of Sherwood from 1984 to 1986.
Jessica Kelly Siobhán Reilly is an English actress. She first appeared on screen in 1995 on the series The Biz. Her other television work includes starring roles in the British crime drama Above Suspicion (2009–2012), the American psychological medical drama Black Box (2014), the American anthology crime drama True Detective (2015) and the historical fantasy drama Britannia (2018). Since 2018, she has played Beth Dutton on the Paramount Network neo-Western drama series Yellowstone, opposite Kevin Costner.
Tube Tales is a 1999 British anthology film of nine short films based on the true-life experiences of London Underground passengers as submitted to Time Out magazine. The stories were scripted and filmed independently of each other. Filming took place on the London Underground network in 1999 by nine directors including Stephen Hopkins, Charles McDougall and Bob Hoskins, with directorial debuts by Ewan McGregor and Jude Law. The film was produced by Richard Jobson and is also Simon Pegg's film debut, in a small role.
Frederic Alan Schepisi is an Australian film director, producer and screenwriter. His credits include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Plenty, Roxanne, A Cry in the Dark, Mr. Baseball, Six Degrees of Separation, and Last Orders.
Last Orders is a 1996 novel by British writer Graham Swift. The book won the 1996 Booker Prize. In 2001, it was adapted for the film Last Orders by Australian writer and director Fred Schepisi.
Charlie Creed-Miles is an English actor. He is notable for his film roles which include Let Him Have It (1991), London Kills Me (1991), Loved Up (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), Nil By Mouth (1997), Essex Boys (2000), King Arthur (2004), Harry Brown (2009), Wild Bill (2011), 100 Streets (2016), and Romans in 2017.
Nolan Hemmings is an English stage and film actor. He is known for his role as Charles E. Grant in Band of Brothers.
The National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble is an annual film award given by the National Board of Review.
Chatham Naval Memorial is a large obelisk situated in the town of Chatham, Kent, which is in the Medway Towns. The memorial is a feature of the Great Lines Heritage Park. The huge expanse of the Great Lines was in its own right a layer of defence to protect Chatham Dockyard from attack.
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a 1978 Australian drama film directed, written and produced by Fred Schepisi, and starring Tom E. Lewis, Freddy Reynolds and Ray Barrett. The film also featured early appearances by Bryan Brown, Arthur Dignam, and John Jarratt. It is an adaptation of the 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally.
Anatol Yusef is an English film, television and stage actor, writer, director. He was born in Barking, East London and is best known for his work at The Royal Shakespeare Company, for his portrayal of Meyer Lansky in the television series Boardwalk Empire, and Channel 4's Southcliffe.
Youth is a 2015 comedy-drama film written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. It is the director's second English-language film, and stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as best friends who reflect on their lives while holidaying in the Swiss Alps. It is a story of the eternal struggle between age and youth, the past and the future, life and death, commitment and betrayal. The cast also includes Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, and Jane Fonda.
King of Thieves is a 2018 British heist film directed by James Marsh. The film is based on the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary of 2015, and stars Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon, Charlie Cox, Jim Broadbent, Paul Whitehouse and Ray Winstone.
The Witcher: Blood Origin is a fantasy television miniseries created by Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and loosely adapted from the Witcher book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. It serves as a prequel to The Witcher. The series premiered on December 25, 2022 on Netflix, and consists of four episodes.
Matt Hookings is a Welsh actor, producer, writer, and entrepreneur. He founded Camelot Films in 2013 in London, United Kingdom.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)