Good movie but grossly overrated

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"Last Embrace" deserves its bad reviews. Imitation of Alfred Hitchcock requires more than respect and deep appreciation. The Miklos Rozsa score does sometimes intrude even though he often wrote film noir scores and a famous score for Mr. Hitchcock that the director did not like. Sometimes the score works extraordinarily well. Well, this is not a Hitchcock film but still, I like this movie. It imitates but also foreshadows director Demme's later great terror oriented mysteries.Mr. Demme is not mechanical or rigid in his use of Hitchcock devices and themes. This film narrative engages one on its own terms.The casting is particularly effective. The late Janet Margolin enriches the film and counts in part for my high score.Roy Scheider, as always, has immense presence Locations in New York encase a time when the city looked particularly rundown and that somehow defines an effective iconography though I have no idea why. This movie deserves closer analysis than this but others probably could do that more effectively than I can at the moment. I very much appreciate the review here by Dorian Tenore-Bartilucci.

I wish it were "Last Dumb Thriller". But thrillers are like that. They are like children: numerous, illogical, and often annoying. They want so desperately to be taken seriously but what is there to take seriously about a child's behaviour or a thriller's plot? Having seen this particular child - I mean... thriller - I understand why reviewers refer to it as "a hitchcockian thriller"; they might as well have called it "idiotic" for that's what "hitchcockian" means in the movie dictionary (look it up, if you don't believe me). Even the soundtrack is old-school Hollywood which is a mistake: it doesn't fit a late 70s film and makes it look phony. Besides, how dare they steal De Palma's idea of stealing from Hitchcock?! The story is absurd. Scheider's wife is killed, and her killers are never an issue. Instead, first his former employers follow him around, and later decide to kill him. Why do they decide to kill him? No explanation. Perhaps because the FBI is a dark, dark organization ("X-Files") which is very trigger-happy about knocking off its former employees for pension-funds reasons. Or perhaps because it's fashionable to want to kill Scheider in this movie; everyone seems to be after him. And while the poor unsuspecting viewer is trying to figure out the mystery by logically assuming that there is a major conspiracy, in reality the killer is... Janet Margolin! Yes, the woman occupying Scheider's living quarters; the one that briefly hinted she was "depraved". Why does she go after Scheider at precisely a time when his wife was murdered and he is feeling paranoid - and followed by his own ex-employers - and not a few years earlier or few years after the wife's murder? A pure hitchcockian (look it up again in the dictionary, in case you forgot what it means) coincidence. And how about that brilliant motive of hers...! Her grandmother was forced into prostitution when she was a fresh-off-the-boat 15 year-old virgin in NY, and then syphilisized by a bunch of horny Jewish men, one of whom - tah-dah! - is Scheider's grandfather. As a result, Margolin has been playing a hooker in her spare time (among other things) in order to kill off all the descendants of the men who so cruelly syphilisized her once-virginal grandmother. How hitchcockian (look it up) is that? The finale then shamelessly rips off the Mount Rushmore scene from "North By Northwest", except that the love-interest is a killer and she doesn't get saved.The movie also offers some dubious/off-kilter dialog and some not-so great acting. Check out the silly and obvious way in which Napier follows Scheider at the cemetery. Let's also not forget the moronic plot-device of Napier reaching for his jacket and holding his hand very suspiciously - but it wasn't a gun! How brilliant! Napier in the tower: now, there's another string of illogical behavioural patterns. J. Demme was, is, and always will be a director without style, without flair, and the man who directed "Philadelphia". Let's give him another Oscar!

This is one of Janet Margolin's best performances and I am reminded of how I miss seeing her in films. She certainly plays a complex character here. Her metamorphosis in one scene in particular is dramatic. Reuniting her with John Glover was great too. Even though they shared no real scenes in Annie Hall, I remember them both in that and was pleased to see each in Last Embrace. Glover is still going strong. The plot of this Hitchcockian thriller is multidimensional and fresh. I think Demme ( not one of my favorites) did a great job and the famous finale at Niagara Falls is reminiscent of NIAGARA without really aping it. This is the film that made want to ride the Maid of the Mist. And the one I always remember when I miss Janet Margolin.

This movie was showing at the terribly late time of 12.00am Last Night on BBC1 which is usually reserved for awful Made-for-TV Dramas starring Jane Seymour or Patty Duke, So i'm always wary of staying up late ,usually Realising soon after that I Shouldn't have bothered,But 'Last Emnrace' a movie that I ashamed to say have never heard of was a very good film and well worth staying up for.It stars that bloke from Jaws with the big Nose Roy Scheider who plays Harry Hannan a Intelligence agent whoose Wife gets killed in a Restaurant shootout, He very quickly suffers a nervous breakdown a spends a few months in a Mental Hospital. Upon his release he starts to think that somebody is trying to kill him, Could it be his agency who do not want him back? and has a young Woman called Ellie who has just recently moved in to his rented apartment got anything to do with it?I really Enjoyed this film from 'Silence of the Lambs' Director Johnathan Demme. It has great performances from Scheider,Margolin and Glover with a Cameo From Walken, with a great climax at the Niagra Falls, Hitchcock would have been proud of, but it does seem to go on and on to pad out it's 100mins+ running time, Other than that I have no complaints.all in all one of the Best Films you've never heard ofA truly underrated Classic (over 25 years old) probably Scheider's BestMy Rating ***1/2 out of ***** or 8/10