As the cliché holds, Hollywood is a hard town in which to live and keep your sanity, soul and health. You only have to meet one actor who proudly recounts his very supporting role in a mid-sized ‘70s motion picture to realize how disturbing and quickly the hopes of so many want-to-bes can evaporate. What makes the whole process even more unsettling to me is the fact that after four years of auditioning, schmoozing and hedging, unknown actors have extremely little to show for their efforts; failed novelists at least have a stack of unproduced manuscripts that they can point to, failed actors have little more than a few audition tapes and a Starbucks apron to their name. And it is into this world of desperation and shattered dreams that writer/director Jeff Nathanson takes the viewer in his directorial debut, The Last Shot.

A bearded Matthew Broderick stars as the most unfortunately named Steven Schats. Schats is an unproduced writer/director with an abominably bad script based upon an even worse idea that he is pitching around town… after he gets off work at the local movie theater. Schats knows he’s a has-been (or a never will be?). He's over 40 and has taken to crashing funerals in an attempt to pass his script to a producer in attendance. Then, just when things look their most bleak, Schats bumps into Joe Wells (Alec Baldwin), an FBI agent who is pretending to be an independent film producer to get closer to the mob. Comedy ensues when Wells options and then green lights Schats’ script.

Nathanson made a name for himself as a screenwriter by crafting the rhythmic flow to director Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. In these two instances, Nathanson showed a distinct knack for capturing the interesting minutia of life and displa.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splaying it in friendly scenes; while I won’t argue that The Terminal is a great movie, watching Tom Hanks character collect quarters from phone booths and returning rent-a-carts for change was decidedly amusing. This serenity and sense of smoothness is not present in The Last Shot.

Based upon a true story, Nathanson’s characters in The Last Shot come and go with no sense of ebb or purpose. Joan Cusack, Calista Flockhart and Tony Shalhoub steal the movie with their small performances as a cynical Hollywood B-list agent, struggling actress and local Mafia leader respectively. Bursting into the movie with a flash of humor and crispness that is mostly missing from the rest of the proceedings, Cusack, Flockhart and Shalhoub make the most of their short appearance and, not surprisingly, The Last Shot vibrates with energy and wit when they are on screen.

The reason for this unorthodox situation–the movie plays much better when its leads aren’t the focal point of the film–is that Nathanson instilled in his supporting characters an air of hyperbole that is distinctly and obviously missing from his two leads. Broderick and Baldwin play their characters realistically, completely oblivious to the host of farcical and subtly cynical jabs at the film industry that enveloped them.

Strangely though, my major problem with The Last Shot is the callous way in which it deals with Schats character, hardly a thought strand you see very often. Nathanson takes pains to establish Schats as a lovable loser. Casting Broderick in the role effectively sealed the nebbish deal. Schats is desperate, shockingly out of touch with reality and clinging ever so dearly to a dream that would remove him from the meaningless existence in which he is currently mired. By the end of the movie, he has been chewed up, forced to compromise every bit of integrity he has and thoroughly screwed over by those persons whom he has, in good faith, placed closest to him. From this, it in very hard to feel uplifted and entertained upon walking out of the theater.

Nathanson is an adept director who has, in his rookie effort, seemingly mastered the art of subtly, something he certainly did not pick up while penning Rush Hour 2 and Speed 2. The Last Shot is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination; it is actually an enjoyable film to watch for the most part. Unfortunately it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, as climactic plot twists that kills dogs and shaft the likeable front man are known to cause. Coupled with a very chaotic and disparate style of pacing, it brings a gloom to The Last Shot that will ultimately relegate this film to a once-viewed wonder.

chris neumer

yes, it's true: There are over 100,000 actors in the American Screen Actor's Guild.