100
Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow
It's like Chekhov with a British accent.
Last Orders
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- United Kingdom,
- Germany
- 2001
- · 109m
Director
Fred Schepisi
Cast
Michael Caine,
Tom Courtenay,
David Hemmings,
Bob Hoskins,
Helen Mirren,
Ray Winstone
Genre
Comedy,
Drama
Before affable butcher Jack Dodd died, he had a final request: that his ashes be scattered in the sea at Margate. His mates Ray, Lenny and Vic and foster son Vince journey to the sea to fulfill his wishes. Along the way, the threads of their lives, loves and disappointments are woven together in their memories of Jack and his wife Amy.
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What are critics saying?
100
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
Like finding that perfect stage of moderate drunkenness in which the senses are sharpened rather than dulled, and time passes with leisurely grace.
100
Salon by Charles Taylor
Unassuming masterpiece about life, love and the cruel joke of old age.
100
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
A movie I loved on first sight and, even more important, love in remembrance. Taken all in all, there's only one last thing to say about it. Go.
90
New Times (L.A.) by Luke Y. Thompson
The film's biggest strength is the same characteristic that may cause people to underrate it: that the group of friends we watch onscreen feel not like England's greatest actors showing off, but rather a group of friends who have indeed known each other for years through life's little triumphs and large tragedies.
90
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
Sad and lovely.
90
L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor
Superbly adapted by Fred Schepisi from the Booker Prize-winning novel by Graham Swift, Last Orders pays quietly passionate tribute to the unsung working-class generation that fought World War II and survived to take up apparently humdrum lives.
90
Variety by David Stratton
Delicately handled and superbly textured, this fine adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel deals with all the really big subjects: love, friendship, death, life.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Gathering its forces slowly, this careful, thoughtful film, quietly but deeply moving, is dramatic without seeming to be.
90
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
A funny and touching film that is gorgeously acted by a British cast to rival Gosford Park's.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
The stars ultimately carry the day, the film cumulatively builds both an emotional power and tender wisdom that's very affecting.
75
Miami Herald by Connie Ogle
It's a warm, skillful excavation of what look like ordinary lives, ones that aren't so simple once you dig a little deeper.
75
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
It is remarkably, unsentimentally dramatized by Fred Schepisi, courtesy of the pitch-perfect performances of its ensemble British cast.
50
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Never quite shrugs off its literary manners. [18 & 25 Feb 2002, p. 200]
50
New York Post by Lou Lumenick
A ho-hum male weepie/road comedy that's worth watching mostly because of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of England's greatest working-class actors.
40
Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis
The temporal jumps between the present and varying points in the past deprive the film of a sense of completeness; the transitions from scene to scene are largely disorienting, leaving you struggling to find your bearings.
30
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
The carload of codgers in Fred Schepisi's Last Orders merely bellyache, philosophize, crack unfunny jokes, and ruminate simplemindedly about Death.
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