Steve Carell will always be remembered as the oafish boss from The Office, and that’s criminal. He’s completely magnetic in these quiet, repressed roles. In Last Flag Flying, he’s aided by his character getting the Good Angel, Bad Angel treatment in the form of Fishburne and Cranston’s characters. Image courtesy Amazon Studios.
8/10 In 2003, the Bush administration, political pundits and the constant fear of terrorism, which still had that new-car smell, created an atmosphere in which supporting soldiers and supporting the recent invasion of Iraq were one and the same, and god damn any American who didn’t.
In the 2017 film Last Flag Flying, set in December of that year, three veterans still scarred by their experience in Vietnam lambaste the government for sending a new generation of soldiers to die in what they see as another unnecessary proxy war.
Doc Shepherd (Steve Carell) has lost his son in the Iraq invasion. He seeks out his closest friends from his time overseas 30 years prior, two-bit bar owner Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) and reformed minister Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), the only human connections he has left. Having served in America’s first unpopular war and burying a casualty of its second, Shepherd is outraged and refuses to allow the military to have his son in death — not to bury him a hero, not even to help pay for his funeral. He, Nealon and Mueller go to Arlington to collect the body and bring it home to suburban New Hampshire.
