Last Seen Alive
As hard as this movie works at being bloody awful, there’s a kernel of something here that keeps you hooked.
Will Spann (Gerard Butler) and his wife Lisa (Jaimie Alexander) have their fair share of marital problems; problems that have led to Jaimie wanting a bit of a break. But their temporary separation is amicable, and Will is driving her to her folks home when she mysteriously vanishes at a gas station. Will, bereft, reaches out to the police, but they are immediately suspicious of him. He has to take action into his own hands, and his actions mean that while he is out of his depth in the criminal underbelly of the town, with time counting down, trying to find her, he is also having to run from the police themselves.
Last Seen Alive, directed by Brian Goodman, is one of the oddest, most jarring films of 2022. Firstly, from a character perspective, Russel Hornsby’s detective and Alexander’s wife are completely and utterly unlikeable. The detective is so insistent on not believing the husband, that it comes across as an SNL sketch rather than an actually written and scripted scene. Secondly, the director chooses to hit us up front with a scene from later in the movie where one of the abductors spills under duress that Lisa is already dead, and that Will is hunting for a corpse. This is one of the most baffling decisions in the entire film, because it sets us up the entire time for not really caring about the plot, completely safe in the notion, from our perspective, that she is already dead. It also is a scene entirely out of character for this detective who for 95% of the piece does not give a single shit that this lady has disappeared, and is just generally disbelieving of the whole affair. For him to suddenly decide to beat the hell out of a witness to get that answer, despite never having shown any urgency or belief she is in danger, and having no impetus to, makes zero sense.
Thirdly, there’s the general plot. Lisa goes missing, and after a failed report to the police, Will finds some security footage that he takes to Lisa’s parents. They immediately identify the man abducting Lisa, tell Will where that man is, and Will finds him no trouble. Will then gets the next location out of this man with next to no issue, goes to that location and shoots up a few people there before concluding his search. It is such a non-started of a plot, so as to be faintly ridiculous. When you compare that with the complexity of the search in Taken, it is laughable.
Then there’s the production value, which beggars belief. Some shots are so dull and flat you imagine they haven’t been colour graded at all since coming out of the camera. Some shots are drenched in blue overtones, looking like a poorly shot version of Twilight. And then others look bloody gorgeous; the shots of Will and Lisa dancing in the sunset in flashback, or Gerard edging through a meth lab with a pistol, look great! It’s not like this discrepancy is scene to scene either; sometimes different shots in the same scene can mix all of these together. It is a trippy, crazy way to view a film, and makes the whole piece feel utterly low rent.
Then there’s Gerard Butler. Goddamn Gerard Butler. Because if it wasn’t for him, this movie would be a complete write-off, absolutely unwatchable. But Butler brings a burning intensity, a likeability, and a freneticism to the piece that somehow, against all odds, rescues this movie.
You can sort of see what he connected with in the material too. Butler plays Will as a non-violent, wealthy developer, thrust into a situation of absolute action and violence, who is completely terrified by that. As he sneaks through meth labs, dukes it out with crackheads, and wanders around a gas station calling his wife's name, the fear in his eyes is palpable. It’s a really great take on this sort of character; one who takes action not because he is capable of it, but simply because he must. We never get the sense he is particularly capable either, despite the sheer luck he experiences in rapidly tracking these people down.
So does that make this a good movie? Not in the least. But it is a movie that is marketed pretty much solely on Butler’s presence, and would likely draw fans of the man. And while it is a disappointing film, for those willing to watch Butler in pretty much anything, this isn’t that bad a movie to sit back and take in. The payoffs are where the payoffs should be, there’s a bit of action, and a bit of mystery, and it’s all just enough to make this a movie; not a good one, or a capable one even, but one that we watch because for Butler fans, we must.
