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Last Orders
Hugely impressive collection of British film heroes - Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Ray Winstone, David Hemmings and Tom Courtenay - gather for this likeable low-key amble through the life and death of a south London butcher
So now we know how many British screen icons can fit in a second-hand Merc cruising down to Margate: it's five, if you're counting Michael Caine's ashes in a box. Last Orders is a small film with big names. And they're impressive, hefty Ray and little Bob and old Tom, as the son and lifelong mates of the late Jack Dobbs (Caine). They're heading down to the coast to fulfil the old butcher's last request, remembering his life while sinking a few pints along the way. They make this adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel work, helping it out when it threatens to get lost in the dozens of brief flashbacks - if Caine's hair is that odd orangey colour, what year is this meant to be? Have we just gone back or forward in time? And why does twentysomething Jack (Field) sound so unlike old Jack - is Field the only man in the country who doesn't do a Michael Caine impression? The plot is threaded with the type of revelations that could be played for melodrama, but here are treated as the small bumps in the road that any life contains. As for action, there's little more than a brilliantly rubbish scuffle between Winstone's Vince and Hemmings' Lenny in a muddy field, two unfit men flailing ineptly. But there is no need for flashy moments because this is a scruffily elegiac mood piece about rumpled old men. And you're unlikely to find a finer bunch of battered old boozers anywhere. |
