The Last Baron
What's not to like, I thought? It's got big names - Christian Slater, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Spall; it has action and the plot sounds feasible, plus it's in Sofia, which I have never seen... Well, here's the truth: The rest of the cast is world-famous, too (in Bulgaria). The plot is so bad, I often found myself wondering if this was a high school drama class group project - you know, "Class, write your own screen play." We open with a gent carrying an ominous briefcase entering a restaurant, apparently in Paris. A little girl swings nearby, giddily laughing and staring at her parents nearby... it is so obvious that the man with the briefcase must be an Islamic terrorist that the constant repetition of the scene throughout the film makes the penultimate bombing flashback completely anticlimactic.This little girl is reintroduced to us in three incarnations - an ESL teacher in Sofia, as an exotic (but putrid) belly-dancer in what apparently is supposed to be the closest thing Sofia has to a titty-bar, and as a brazen, sunglasses-wearing stereotypical ice-cold killer assassin. The oh-so-clever use of wigs apparently is supposed to not only fool main protagonist Christian Slater into believing the woman to be separate people, but also the audience at large, and the rest of the cast as well.The assassin, we are told, is a vigilante who has apparently been picking off Islamic fundamentalist targets one by one. We are privy, however, to the fact that she gets her targets via mysterious mobile phone texts.Enter Donald Sutherland as the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, who is Christian Slater's boss. Slater is an attaché at the embassy who is mainly concerned with the spread of English as a Second Language teaching in Bulgaria. Ambassador Sutherland decides that Slater should instead work with the (crooked, of course) Bulgarian police to solve the killings, because, after all, local authorities are incompetent (Bulgarians). Slater is, you see, an ex-FBI agent who left "the Bureau" because his wife and child were killed earlier and he is "trying to forget" everything. Mind you, this is dribbled out bit by bit throughout this long-winded, badly written epic production.Intermingled with all this exciting (yawn!) action is a bunch of scenes with Timothy Spall, who is apparently a brilliant psychiatrist who just happens to be befriended with Slater's character and just happens to be the shrink of the wig-wearing assassin in all three of her persona. He, like everyone else in the film, is totally surprised by her cunning use of different wigs and has no clue the three patients are all one and the same person, probably because he spends most of the sessions with them "perfecting" really bad pencil sketches of them instead of actually asking them any deep questions.Slater meets the wig-wearing wonder woman the first time at a very badly acted ESL school scene in which he is apparently functioning in his nebulous attaché capacity. He meets Wiggy the Assassin again with Timothy Spall as a belly dancer in scenes featuring the most appalling attempt by Slater to look as though he is not only in love, but in total lust, with her when she does some of the worst belly dancing ever caught on film. He is apparently supposed to be totally aroused by her even though his facial expression is more like someone who is about to vomit; perhaps the director should have asked Slater to achieve an erection and then zoomed in on the bulge in his trousers (if there is one big enough) to make perfectly clear that it is arousal he is trying to portray.Intermingled between all these apparently human-interest building flashbacks and flash forwards, we are privy to the various assassinations and, bit by bit, how Wiggy came to be the apparently confused mess she is today. Each time she flashes back to her childhood in Paris, we see a little more of the bombing which killed her parents. Each time she goes to Spall the Shrink, she "blacks out" or "steps away," and occasionally we see flashbacks of her undergoing electroshock therapy or being confined in a padded cell in what is obviously a mental institution.Everything culminates in the climactic "final" assassination: Wiggy is tasked with bumping off a bigwig "Islamic terrorist leader" who arrives in Sofia to fire up the "troops" so that "Islam can take over the world." Slater, who has in the meantime put together (in a host of very bad scenes of his doing supposed detective work at his embassy desk) that Wiggy's three persona might be the same person thanks to a faded tattoo on her right upper buttock, happens to catch sight of her and tails her to the site of the planned assassination. Here, the two of them engage in some very badly acted oriental martial arts style hand to hand combat which involves steel pipes placed handily on the ground nearby. Slater gets his butt kicked, assassination goes forward, the end is nigh and I won't tell you any more than that. If you really want to know, watch it yourself; suffice it to say it is hokey in the extreme. My advice to Donald Sutherland: Find a new accountant if you needed the cash badly enough to be talked into making this dog. Same for Slater, along with the counsel that he may not want to do anymore scenes in which he is supposed to be in lust, smitten or horny for a woman as nobody was buying it. To the screen play author: Please don't quit your day job; your efforts are in vain and wasted. You have no talent; please refrain from further writing!
Greg Francis
OK, technically it is not rotten, just a completely amateur effort. They had some interesting camera work and Slater and Sutherland of course do respectable acting jobs, but that is IT as far as things to like. Wow, the story is just SO lame, really not sure how they got those two guys to do the movie, but I am thinking it probably included a few dollar signs. The budget listed on IMDb is $5 million, I am assuming that each guy got a LEAST a million to swallow their pride and do this pig. Where to start with the bad stuff, hmmmm. Hiring actresses to be featured belly dancers in the same bar that they go to EVERY night that are obviously NOT, including the main actress who looks more like she has Parkinsons or something. Having the same actress be 3 women (without being recognized immediately) basically by switching wigs is very "supermannish" of them. She has a raised mole over her right eyebrow, kind of gives it away. And trying to present her as this ravishing beauty is also hiLARious! The main plot point about having to put the "retired US spy" on the case to figure out why someone is killing terrorists in Bulgaria is puzzling as well. Why the hell would we care? I swear this was written by kids in 6th grade, I could go on forever about the stupidity in the script. Even the title is meant to sound enticing, but is just infantile. Save yourself the 90 minutes and do just about ANYTHING else, this thing is a LAME JOKE!
sircles
Presumably the author of this film had done something interesting prior to making this production, but that is difficult to believe. The plot is very confusing as it seems to pretend that there was doubt of an identity of a character also being another character but as it is the same actress there was never any doubt at all. The acting is terrible and the production is awful. Timothy Spall could not save this film and he usually at least add something. Whatever happened to make this film was a drastic mistake and I would advise you to destroy any copies you see on DVD. I would start by removing the DVD from the case and stamping on it in the shop, then snap it in front of the sales clerk, then burn the remaining parts, then remove the cover from the sleeve and burn it and then use the cover for a different DVD as it is no longer infected.It is a shame they didn't try and make the worst movie in history because then you could take your hat off to a job done very convincingly.
Dan McDonald
So this showed up in my queue the other day and sat through it. Yeah, its pretty bad. I am surprised Sutherland and Slater signed on to this.I read the reviews and was stunned by the number of people who said they couldn't follow along with this. It's fairly straight forward what the story line is: hot vigilante/multiple personality disorder person (English Teacher, Assassin and of course belly dancer) is fighting Islamic terrorists in Bulgaria while CIA/State Department/English as a Second language program US government guy falls in love with one of her personalities (yep, the belly dancer personality so that the directors can shot lots of footage of scantily dressed women dancing). Meanwhile in the belly dancing bars, Slater looks like a teenager losing his mind in a strip club.Some random violence. Some random blood and some random belly dancing.I gave it a 2 because there are only certain films that I save that distinction of a "1" for to highlight what the worse possible use of your life could be.Cheers.
