Last Hour (2008)

 

Last Hour (2008)- * *

Directed by: Pascal Caubet

Starring: Michael Madsen, DMX, Tony D'Amario, Tommy Wong, Krystana Ferentz,  Pascal "Kobe" Caubet, Monica Cruz, Paul Sorvino, and David Carradine

When a group of "dangerous men with guns" are summoned to a house somewhere in China, a potentially volatile situation presents itself. They all have nicknames, and they are: Monk (Madsen), Mr. Casino (D'Amario), Black Jack (DMX), Poker (Caubet), and Shang (Wong). A woman nicknamed Poison (Ferentz) invites them into the house. After a lot of mutual suspicion, they find out they can't get out and they only have an hour to live. Detectives Mike Stone (Carradine) and Rosa Mulero (Cruz) from the NYPD follow them to the house and a standoff begins. And what does Steinfeld (Sorvino) have to do with any of this? Will it be THE LAST HOUR for our assembled houseguests?


If you loved the utter incoherence of Diamond Cartel (2015), also starring Madsen, you'll also love The Last Hour. It's pretty surprising that they weren't directed by the same person. The Last Hour isn't a movie in the traditional sense that we all know, it's more of a 95-minute series of disjointed, puzzling incongruities. If you've seen one or the other of these whackadoo outings, you'll know what we're talking about. If you haven't, it's hard to recommend them outright, but we can guarantee you won't see anything like them.


This isn't to be confused with The Last Hour (1991) starring Michael Pare and Shannon Tweed - this particular Last Hour is directed by, and stars, a French gentleman named Pascal Caubet who goes by the name Kobe. The Last Hour was his first and last theatrical (i.e. not a telefilm) outing to date and lord only knows what he was thinking.



The first third or so of the film jumps from Reno, to New York, to San Diego, to "Somewhere in Eastern Europe", to Beijing, to Miami, to Macau, to Hong Kong, and probably some other places we've forgotten. With each place, we seemingly get a new plot. When we finally land at the "13th Precinct" in NYC, we find out that this particular precinct doesn't use lights. New York's finest wander around in literal darkness as they try to solve crimes.


Before all this, we get a trailer-like montage of scenes that we're about to see. Then during the opening credits, many of them are illegible. Perhaps they were trying to be so cool, they forgot to include a readable font. At some point we're introduced to Michael Madsen's hair, which looks like someone glued a kid's stuffed lion doll on his head. Kobe's accent is impenetrably thick most of the time.


DMX seems to be trying to inject some much-needed energy into the proceedings, but it all comes up against the brick wall of the quizzical, shoulder-shrugging randomness of the film itself. He mainly ends up yelling and pointing his gun at people, which is what almost every character does. Points should also go to Tony D'Amario as Mr. Casino, who was one of the better characters. He was known for his appearance in District B13 (2004), but, sadly, The Last Hour was D'Amario's final screen appearance. While D'Amario passed away in 2005, the film was released three years later, in '08. His career was just getting going. That was truly unfortunate.


More than likely thanks to the fact that Caubet somehow managed to wrangle a very solid B-Movie cast together for this, it received a DVD release. There are no features on the disc which might explain what the heck we just watched. Because none of this makes any sense, it's hard to care about the characters or what happens to be happening to them. If none of the above bothers you, feel free to check it out, but you've been warned.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty