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STUDIO: Wea Corp.
MSRP: $19.95
RATED: N/A
RUNNING TIME: 97 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Trailer
• Deleted scenes
• Extended scenes
• Behind the scenes
• Commentary
The Pitch
“It’s Reservoir Dogs meets Apocalypse Now meets that scene in the Sopranos where Tony and Christopher chop up the dead body.”
The Humans
Gry Bay, Morten Vogelius, Jette Philipsen, Peter Damm-Ottesen
The Nutshell
Nigel (Vogelius) may be the dumbest guy alive (although he’s not billed that way). One drunken night a mysterious man in an eye patch gives Nigel the name of a scary looking guy (Damm-Ottesen, who resembles the WWE’s Kane) for a possible job. While on the “interview” henchmen drag a current employee through the room and beat the crap out of him (and drive nails through his hands) in the back room. Nigel can hear the screams. Nigel still accepts the job.
The job is to watch some boxes. Only, Nigel is too dumb to do that small task, instead he ends up screwing one of “Kane’s” hot employees (Gry Bay). Nigel’s life goes downhill from there.
“What do you mean you think Steel Magnolias is for sissies?"
The Package
For a movie obviously shot on the cheap they packed it with extras. There is a commentary, extended scenes, deleted scenes, trailer, a behind the scenes featurette and an Easter Egg from the premiere. There is nothing outstanding in any of the extras, but the fact that the creators cared enough to stuff the disk with stuff is good enough. I expected this film to have nothing with it and seeing a plethora of goodies was a nice surprise.
The sound is tip-top too. The Europop soundtrack floods the speakers and will make you long for that semester you spent in Europe.
“I probably shouldn’t have used such a sharp razor when shaving down there."
The Lowdown
Last Exit is a really cool flick. It drips the same blood of your average post-Tarantino crime movie, but with a European Independent flair that makes it interesting to watch.
Vogelius is very good as Nigel. The movie centers around him and the situation he has gotten himself into. You can feel his anxiety rising as he gets deeper in the muck. You feel for him as he pulls yet another cigarette from his pack and begins hitting the bottle with breakfast. It doesn’t take the viewer long to realize that this downward spiral isn’t going to end well.
It is his descent into hell is where the movie succeeds. Nigel goes step-by-step down the road. There is never a huge, out-of-character leap. Every action he takes is small and the result of an action that came before it. The viewer is never left thinking “oh, come on, he wouldn’t do that.” However, if the viewer had met Nigel and then seen him do something from the end of the movie (and out of character for Nigel at the beginning) we would say just that.
That is because the Nigel we know at the end of the movie, and what he does, is not the same Nigel from the beginning. We have seen his journey and we understand how he got there. The filmmakers have taken the time to introduce us to Nigel and show us how continual small actions lead him somewhere he never would have gone to in one step. It is the commitment to this and the acting by Vogelius that make Last Exit something worth seeing.
I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways…