Last Flag Flying
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater & Darryl Ponicsan - Based on the novel by Darryl Ponicsan
Starring: Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, J. Quinton Johnson, Yul Vazquez, Cicely Tyson, Deanna Reed-Foster, Graham Wolfe, Jeff Monahan
Comedy/Drama - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Nov 2017
Written by: Richard Linklater & Darryl Ponicsan - Based on the novel by Darryl Ponicsan
Starring: Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, J. Quinton Johnson, Yul Vazquez, Cicely Tyson, Deanna Reed-Foster, Graham Wolfe, Jeff Monahan
Comedy/Drama - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Nov 2017
While the repercussions of Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to ripple today and there remains a U.S. military presence inside the country, it will give you one of those ‘how old am I getting’ moments to realize the initial invasion was almost 15 years ago. The debates about why our leaders chose the war, false intelligence, and the pros and cons of everything that has happened since continue, but they no longer rage. Tensions have cooled, there are plenty other issues to tear each other apart over, and while there are already a fair amount of Iraq films, the war approaches an era far enough away chronologically to examine it with older, more impartial eyes. Cinema mellowed from the initial, raw Vietnam films like The Deer Hunter to Secretary McNamara’s reckoning in The Fog of War to the ultimate examination in this year’s Ken Burns 10-part, 18-hour miniseries. We may wait another 20 years for Operation Iraqi Freedom to receive its defining account, but Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying takes us back those 15 years to remind us what it was like when the caskets started coming home.
Those audience members familiar with the director will understand Last Flag Flying is a Richard Linklater type of war movie. There are long scenes of back-and-forth dialogue; those extended conversations which make his Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood soar. Most famous for comedy, from the early Dazed and Confused to its very loose sequel Everybody Wants Some!!, but respected for his dramatic chops as well, Last Flag Flying is a departure for Linklater. He has never touched war and its consequences before. Co-written with Darryl Ponicsan, who wrote Last Flag Flying as a novel and sequel to 1973’s The Last Detail, this film is not a direct sequel to that Jack Nicholson movie; it’s a spiritual cousin.
Those audience members familiar with the director will understand Last Flag Flying is a Richard Linklater type of war movie. There are long scenes of back-and-forth dialogue; those extended conversations which make his Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood soar. Most famous for comedy, from the early Dazed and Confused to its very loose sequel Everybody Wants Some!!, but respected for his dramatic chops as well, Last Flag Flying is a departure for Linklater. He has never touched war and its consequences before. Co-written with Darryl Ponicsan, who wrote Last Flag Flying as a novel and sequel to 1973’s The Last Detail, this film is not a direct sequel to that Jack Nicholson movie; it’s a spiritual cousin.
Furrowing your brow and simply questioning U.S. involvement in Iraq through the mid-2000s would get you labelled unpatriotic. When the country is sold on war fever, its acolytes forget one can be anti-war, outright critical of political promises, and continue to question leadership but still be a patriot. Paralleling Vietnam and Iraq, grieving father Larry ‘Doc’ Shepherd (Steve Carell, Battle of the Sexes) knows all too well when grandstanding politicians make pronouncements, it will be freshly-minted, blue collar high school graduates paying the bill. Riding on the shoulders of a ‘get the gang back together’ road movie, the film’s three protagonists are examples of how Vietnam shaped the next 30 years.
Doc kept his head down and raised a little family. Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne, John Wick: Chapter 2) found God and became the Reverend Mueller. Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston, The Infiltrator) stayed angry and opened a bar to continue to snipe at the world. Enlisting his old friends to help collect his son’s remains and help bury him at Arlington National Cemetery, Doc and the crew catch up, reflect, and shake their heads that all those lessons learned from their generation were for naught. Making the tragedy palatable, there is a thick comedic layer hanging out on top to lessen any real, sour feelings which may poke their head through the protective laughter shield.
Cranston is the group’s comedian and fuss bucket where in one breath he rails against the ‘ragheads’ but recognizes the same propaganda slogans like, “Fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here.” Sal persistently pokes at the Reverend because a new found faith in God is too easy to soothe one’s demons. Sal opines they’ve all sinned, so take it like a man and lean on alcohol to get you through until your number is up. He knows exactly how to burrow under Mueller’s skin to revive the long-buried hellion hiding beneath the Reverend’s robes. Obviously catering to the baby boomers who remember what America looked like during Vietnam, Linklater uses the 2003 setting to mock the cell phone invasion and that “trash mouth” rapper, Eminem. Sal says all the same, naughty words Eminem does, but in his day, it was Motown on the radio.
These little innuendos and cultural barbs mean Last Flag Flying caters to an earlier generation than the one which actually fought in Iraq; it’s not for them. The road crew on their way to bury a kid finally reached the age where their memories are all reflection and nostalgia rather than simply ‘what happened’. Juxtaposing two wars which echo one another, Linklater avoids the immediate, mission-focused war movie plot (think Jarhead, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper) to examine war’s long-term effects and what it does to the men who come home and who cope with surviving those who remained behind. Be it religion, family, or booze, these are the forgotten ones who paid the bill politicians keep charging.
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