An action-packed slog

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Back in the 1980s a real FBI agent convinced his bosses to set up a sting operation around a fake movie production. It had to look real, and seem real, so for that reason all involved thought a movie really was being made. This movie, "Last Shot", is loosely based on those real events in the 1980s. The DVD has an interesting extra, where the real agent from the 1980s meets up with and talks with the guys he set up to do the movie, and it is cool to see them reminiscing about it.Matthew Broderick plays Steven Schats with his patented comic style, very appropriate for this role. He works at a movie theater but, like most in Hollywood, has a movie script that he knows would be a big success. Alec Baldwin plays Joe Devine, the FBI agent who thinks up the idea for the sting, and who roams Hollywood for a suitable script and director. That he picks Schats and his script are total surprises to Schats.There are lots of funny characters, like Toni Collette who plays a wanna be famous actress, Tony Shalhoub who plays the mob guy they are after, Calista Flockhart who is Schats' girlfriend and aspires to be an actress, Tim Blake Nelson who is Schats' brother and co-writer of the script, and Ray Liotta who is the brother of Joe Divine.The actual story is fairly thin, but almost stranger than fiction. Most of the fun is the series of comic moments. Moderately interesting.

The best part of this film was the opening credits (or "titles") done in a splendid, imaginative way with the names appearing on objects associated with a movie theatre. I also liked Toni Collette's outrageous performance of a diva dying to be cast in a career-saving role. There is also a great scene in which it appears as though literally everyone in L.A. has a written a screenplay that they are dying to see produced. But, alas, the rest of the film was not very funny. The over-the-top approach to every moment became predictable, and the timing of the lines could have been crisper, especially in the scenes between Alec Baldwin and Matthew Broderick.There was potentially a good film idea here. But just like the "Arizona" film that was the centerpiece of the story, the screenplay for "The Last Shot" seemed written by amateurs.

At first glance, 'The Last Shot' appears to have all of the trappings of extremely hilarious comedy of misadventures, misconceptions, and misunderstandings. But in retrospect, it was only moderately so, and probably because of much of the deadpan acting and not enough quirkiness within each character (not one of which that would border on characters common to spoof, but more of a deviation that would at least make the situations seem much more bizarre and humorous). Perhaps if Stanley Tucci (see The Imposters) or Martin Scorcese (see After Hours and Search & Destroy) had been given this material, the results would've been much better.This is the story of a federal agent (Alec Baldwin) trailing a mobster (Tony Shaloub) who has been involved with teamster corruption. The agent poses as a producer and picks up some shmoe writer (Matthew Broderick) who has been desperately trying to sell his script and, as this producer, claims he will finance the film, and even asking the writer--already astounded by the ease at which his film has been approved by this producer--to direct. The director believes he has found his golden opportunity, while the half-hearted "producer" is only interested in getting as far as necessary so that he can initiate a deal with the teamsters and nab his guy. What may seem like comparable to the hilarious mockumentary, 'Cannes Man,' in fact only tends to provide such extremes only in unusual intervals. Perhaps for lack of material, or not enough of a story to go on, the resulting comedy is at best a mediocre one with the potential to be much better.Props, however, to Toni Collette (always an excellent actress) for playing the bizarre, self-indulgent Emily French, and Joan Cusak (wasted here in a minor role) as the neurotic producer and the agent's mentor.

The Last Shot is a quirky, enjoyable art-house comedy based on the true story of an FBI agent, Garland Schweickhardt, who was in charge of an elaborate operation named "Dramex" to nab mob influences in the film business.The Schweickhardt character in the film is named Joe Devine (Alec Baldwin). After a brief character establishing scene and an amazing title/opening credits sequence (featuring movie theater objects) that's one of the most creative and cute ones I've seen yet, Devine is transferred to the Providence, Rhode Island FBI office and learns of Tommy Sanz' (Tony Shalhoub) illegal mob dealings with the local teamsters. He figures that the best way to bust Sanz is to set up a fake film shoot and try to get him to make a deal to avoid having to use (and more importantly pay for) union truckers. So Devine, who knows next to nothing about the film business, poses as a producer and heads to Hollywood.He gets a crash course in the industry from insider Fanny Nash (Joan Cusack in a hilarious extended cameo), and he begins his search for a script and director. Enter struggling screenwriter Steven Schats (Matthew Broderick), who has a day job as a ticket taker at Mann's Chinese Theater and who lives next to a noisy (of course) dog kennel, a fact that profoundly annoys his struggling actress girlfriend, Valerie Weston (Calista Flockhart). Schats has been shopping his script, "Arizona", for a number of years to no avail. Devine sets up a meeting with him and immediately offers him a deal, including casting power, final cut and points. Of course Schats jumps on the deal.There's only one problem. The script calls primarily for location shots in the desert, including Hopi Indian cave scenes. It's integral to the story. But Devine insists that they shoot in Rhode Island. The bulk of The Last Shot hinges on a few different conflicts, including the FBI's reservations about Devine's plan, which keeps snowballing and turning into a more far reaching lie.Although it's not every day that the FBI sets up a bogus film production, director and writer Jeff Nathanson uses his debut film as a helmer to comment on various levels of the typical craziness of the movie business. Devine's FBI superiors function as executive producers who are regularly perplexed about where their money is going, but who are easily enough talked into furthering their support as Devine pitches additional time and resources they need to acquire. On a more literal level, Nathanson is also able to spoof agents, directors, actors, and many processes, such as location scouting and casting. Much of this material is hilarious, and viewers do not need to have any intimacy with the film industry to "get it", or to get that there is probably a lot more truth to these scenes than is usually admitted.The cast is excellent, including Baldwin and Broderick. They may not be the first two names many cineastes would think of when they imagine an art-house film propelled by humorous but poignant performances, but The Last Shot just shows why such conventional wisdom views are off the track. A lot of sizable stars take roles with far less screen time than normal--including Shalhoub, Flockhart and Ray Liotta, but this is a well-written script that turned out to be well directed, so it was a good move for them.At the same time that Nathanson enables a somewhat sarcastic, cynical view of the film-making process, there is a parallel plot featuring Devine that emphasizes a much more romantic view of the lure of the business. It becomes increasingly clear as The Last Shot unfolds that Devine is no longer concerned with just or even primarily nabbing mobsters. He's trying to plunge deeper into making his "fake" feature because he's falling in love with the idea of film-making. There's a particular line of dialogue delivered by one of Devine's superiors in the FBI, having to do with continuing Devine's project, that is not only a hilarious line in context, it's virtually the climax of the film. Devine has triumphed. The sham has become not what he tells Schats, but what he tells his supervisors. The subsequent conclusion of the film is thus heartwarming and a bit melancholy/tragic at the same time. It's a nice change of pace from more stereotypically "Hollywood" endings.This is a very good, near-excellent film that has not received the attention it deserves. Although there is an art-house atmosphere to it, it's really more of a mainstream film that should have opened wide in multiplexes with a big publicity campaign. I never even noticed the film on its theatrical release, and I live in New York City and usually pay attention to what's playing the art-house theaters. I only noticed the DVD through my weekly scouring of release schedules to make sure I don't miss anything. Give it a chance and make sure you tell a friend or two about it.