The Last Thing He Wanted (2020)
1h 56m | PG-13
At the turning point of the Iran-Contra affair, Elena McMahon, a fearless investigative journalist covering the 1984 US presidential campaign, puts herself in danger when she abandons her assigned task in order to fulfill the last wish of her ailing father, a mysterious man whose past activities she barely knows.
Director: Dee Rees
Studio: Elevated Films
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Video: 720p
Cast
Anne Hathaway
as Elena McMahon
Ben Affleck
as Treat Morrison
Rosie Perez
as Alma Guerrero
Willem Dafoe
as Richard McMahon
Edi Gathegi
as Jones
Mel Rodriguez
as Barry Sedlow
Reviews
This has to be the worst example yet of the Netflix gazillions buying a cast that looks great on paper, but that delivers badly on screen. It isn't necessarily their fault - the writing is as incoherent as it is facile and the direction is all over the shop. There are simultaneous threads to the story (journalist Anne Hathaway "Elena" ends up in Central America getting drawn into a story of US government/agency duplicity and espionage that she was meant to be there to report on, basically) that simply don't tie up - we have no context into which we can immerse ourselves! Ben Affleck can't need the cash this badly and though Toby Jones did make me smile; I'm not sure he was meant to. It's a decent enough book, so what happened with this poor adaptation to screenplay is anyone's guess, but please can we have more emphasis on the quality of the story and dialogue to make the A-list cast worth their money next time?