Released: June 2022
Director: Brian Goodman
Rated R
Run Time: 94 Minutes
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Genre: Thriller
Cast:
Gerard Butler: Will Spann
Jamie Alexander: Lisa Spann
Russell Hornsby: Detective Paterson
Ethan Embry: Knuckles
Michael Irby: Oscar
When you watch movies as much as I do, you begin to notice certain…similarities between some movies. Usually, it’s in the story-telling department. Let’s be honest here: Original material in the film industry is really hard to come by, so most studios will rely on tried-and-true forms of story-telling to get butts in seats. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, except when a movie bares a striking resemblance to a different film in the same genre. Now, I’m not talking about similar movies like say, Dante’s Peak or Volcano. Those were two very different volcano movies that came out about the same time. No, that’s not what I’m getting at here. I’m talking about copy-cat movies. These are movies where a plot-line from a particular movie is identical to another movie in the same genre. It happens more often that you would think. Is it done on purpose? Most of the time, no. But when Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Spectre came out within months of each other, people couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the films. Another case is The Raid and Dredd(2012). These involve law officers scaling a building to take out a drug lord, only to be trapped and hunted down by the criminal element. Very similar story-lines, but they were still different in how they approached it. The kidnap thriller is notorious for having very similar movies. How many different ways can you tackle a kidnapping story? Narratively, it usually involves human trafficking, ransoms, or the occasional experiment. Well, we got ourselves a new kidnap thriller for you today: Last Seen Alive
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A man and his wife are on a road trip(I love road trips)when they stop to get gas. The wife goes into the gas station to get some water and she disappears. The husband frantically searches for her, while a local cop has suspicions about the husband. Sounds familiar right? Where else could we have seen this kind of story? Let’s see…there was a movie and its remake called The Vanishing which involved pretty much the same plot, except the original movie was much darker. Oh, yeah! Breakdown with Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan. That’s right. Except that movie had the car break down in the middle of nowhere. Eh, details. The fact of the matter is, is that Last Seen Alive is derivative of much better movies. That’s not to say that this is a bad movie. Far from it. But there are mistakes made in the narrative that really shouldn’t have been made. The opening scene makes the entire film predictable by almost giving everything away. That’s fairly noob-ish. That said, the film is very simple and easy to follow. There are flashbacks that give explanations as to the current state of things between Butler’s Will Spann and his wife, Lisa, played by Jamie Alexander. There are no wild twists, just a guy looking for his wife. It’s a story that’s been done before and done better, but it still manages to entertain.
I’m a huge fan of Gerard Butler. Even when he was playing Dracula in Dracula 2000 he had this unique charisma that just made him really interesting to watch. Phantom of the Opera was one of his more interesting roles as the Phantom, and he did it really well. But his real breakthrough was in Zack Snyder’s 300 and the rest is history. When it comes to action movies, he’s definitely got it where it counts. Dramatic performances is where I feel he struggled a bit for a while. He’s definitely gotten better over the past few years, especially in Greenland. I like Gerard Butler a lot. Thankfully, he does a pretty good job here as a husband who is desperate to find his wife. Jamie Alexander as Lisa isn’t given a whole lot to do. Her character is the victim in this movie and while she makes appearances in flashbacks, her presence is really mute. Russell Hornsby as Detective Patterson helps shoulder the movie with Butler. His cop is empathetic, tough, and driven. The performances are pretty good across the board.
The thing about thrillers is their ability to hook you and make you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen next. Last Seen Alive really could’ve been something truly memorable, but the opening sequence almost ruins the tension. The last thing you want to do in a thriller is to ruin the tension by giving away too much information too soon, and that’s what happened here. That’s not to say that there isn’t tension. There definitely is, but it’s constantly battling questionable writing that has certain characters making really dumb decisions that even desperate people wouldn’t make. I like Butler in this role, and I think he does pretty well, but his character does things that are highly questionable, especially from a legal point of view. Because of those issues, the verisimilitude of the film is diminished. There is fun to be had here if you can suspend your disbelief more than you should.
I guess Last Seen Alive got some kind of a theatrical release because I see box office return for 3.4 million dollars. It’s weird, because the movie doesn’t look like it cost anywhere near that much. After looking at Box Office Mojo, it looks like it only hit theaters internationally. It didn’t get a domestic opening here. It just went straight to streaming/video. For a Gerard Butler movie, that’s not really a good outlook. I get it, he’s not the biggest box office draw, but most of his stuff managed to get a domestic theatrical release. So, THIS is a huge step down for him. I had heard about this movie last year when it was under a different name, Chase. I guess that name didn’t take, so they traded one generic name for another. I can’t imagine why this movie was released for the big screen. The cinematography is not that great. Yeah, you got some nice landscape shots here and there, but there’s definitely some shaky-cam shenanigans going on. It doesn’t feel or look like a theatrically made movie. It’s clearly a low-budget movie, and I get that, but I’ve seen some low-budget fare that look like big productions. Catch the Fair One looks far more professional than this.
Do I hate Last Seen Alive? No. I don’t think it’s a terrible movie. But there were some…interesting decisions made here that takes the movie down a few notches for me. Still, it’s a decent ride if you can shut your brain off for an hour and a half. I just hate seeing Gerard Butler being reduced to appearing in near direct-to-video stuff like this. He’s the kind of guy that has a big screen presence and that’s what he deserves. Is this movie worth your time? Maybe, if you’re a fan of Gerard Butler. But aside from that, I can’t really see this movie having any staying power with the general audience. It’s fine.