Review of ‘Last Flag Flying’
**** out of five stars
Currently on video and streaming on Amazon Prime
by Walter G. Tarrow
How did you celebrate this past Memorial Day?
Did you, like millions, like the majority, of Americans, have a happy holiday weekend with family and friends? Were you thankful that Memorial Day, since 1971, falls on the last Monday in May, thus ensuring a long weekend of BBQ, beer, and maybe some fireworks too, to kick off the summer?
I remember delivering Special Delivery mail on Memorial Days past when the haze of smoke from grills billowed onto the streets making neighborhoods appear as if from within clouds. “It’s clouds’ illusions I recall…”
Did you have fun this past last Monday in May?
And did you find time in your revelry, your celebration, your partying, to observe what was originally Decoration Day, a day to remember and honor those who died in service to our country by decorating their graves with flowers? Or at least to pause for the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m. to remember, to contemplate on, the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been lost, cut short, violently ended in war? Or the countless thousands and thousands of wounded and damaged, many still too young to have ever really lived, returning home, forever with little hope for a future that once was?
I remember often, not just on Memorial Day, Jeff Borr and Scott Smith, two friends I knew as fellow students at Grand Valley State College. Scott joined the Navy believing he’d be safe on a ship off the Vietnam coast. Jeff became a warrant officer, a helicopter pilot. Jeff came to visit me, for us to spend a few days together, while I was stationed at the ammo dump outside Qui Nhon. But that’s a story for another time.
They are both gone now. And the stories of their passing are truer than any jingoistic sunshine patriot bullshit spread by those who continue to benefit from sending innocent children to their deaths. And, on that note, I watched Richard Linklater’s (Boyhood, Bernie, School of Rock, Dazed and Confused) tale of a father bringing his son’s body home from war.
Last Flag Flying stars Steve Carell (The Office, Foxcatcher) as Doc, the sad sack widower who undertakes a road trip to reconnect with two of his Vietnam Marine buddies, whom he hasn’t seen in forty years, to stand with him while his son, killed in the Iraq War, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Hannibal) plays the Reverend Mueller who, regardless of his raucous past, now comes to serve as the conscience that tempers the impulsive third jarhead Sal. Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Trumbo) is the alcoholic reprobate bar owner Sal and he owns the show. His performance is kinetic, constantly challenging, forever questioning why.
But the quiet sorrow, the tortured grief, of Steve Carell’s Doc is the crux of the story. “I’m not going to bury a Marine. I’m just going to bury my son.” But a Marine is buried because, as Sal declares, “F**k what the politicians did. (He) served.”
Linklater has made an actors’ movie. A film rich in credible situations, dialogue and feelings. And with Sal, plenty of humor too. A movie that just feels right and honest and true.
So some day I’ll tell my stories of Jeff and Scott, but for now, keep Decoration Day in your heart and mind and go watch Last Flag Flying.
Walt,
I was touched by the personal element you included in this piece. I have not lost a loved one, friend or relative, in service to our country, but I get a sense of the loss you feel still at the loss of your friends.
I feel ambivalence about this day of remembrance. Even a “just war” engenders in me a feeling of the futility of war and the resultant loss of life. For those who died in Vietnam I feel profound emotions of anger and grief over the unnecessary death and suffering.
There was no barbecue or fun at our house. Just a prayer in passing that we, as human beings, can get beyond violent conflict, and stop sending our young men and women to die alone on some God-forsaken battlefield.
Peace.