One Last Dance is a new crime film that also attempts to be funny a lot more than it actually is. And how many times can it be said? Fart jokes, no matter the context or film, just aren’t funny anymore. Especially when the tone of the rest of the film just doesn’t warrant it. It’s expected in a Farrelly Brothers film, you know, a comedy of grotesqueness. Not in the midst of a semi-serious action gangster flick.
Director Max Makowski shapes his new film, One Last Dance, like a sort of quiet action film with a screenplay merging influences from Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) to Park (Mr. Vengeance). Unfortunately, their inspiration didn’t leak into the direction department, as the film is full of amateurish camera movements. It’s not that the entire piece is written so terribly; it’s just that the film is thrown together in the most undesirable fashion. The extremely flat camera work attempts to hide itself with quick editing tactics only to fail miserably.
T (Francis Ng) is a hit man working for a mob boss desperate to find those responsible for kidnapping his son. He drops red envelopes in the mailbox, which reveal the names of said kidnappers, and it’s T’s job to hunt them down. In typical genre fashion, this is to be the assassin’s last gig. He’s fallen in love with one of the lower level mafioso’s sister. That’s really all there is to this film. The action scenes are pretty frequent throughout but are ultimately destroyed with some horrific computer-generated blood splatter that shouldn’t have been allowed to leave the editing suite.
Actor Francis Ng (A Man Called Hero and Infernal Affairs 2) does an exceptional job with the little he’s given script wise. Harvey Keitel shows up briefly and delivers his lines as if he’s never acted a day in his life. Instead of playing a mob boss like Marlon Brando back in the day, he takes the new school Robert De Niro approach by forgetting every role he’s played prior. To see such skilled veterans in films far below their talent is sadly becoming less frustrating and more acceptable. I guess it’s okay if you’re doing it for the salary but when it’s something this low budget, what’s the point?
