LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Wizard-8 Despite its cast and being distributed by a major Hollywood studio, "The Last Shot" didn't get much of a theatrical release. Maybe the studio heads feared that a general audience wouldn't get the jokes, or maybe it was because it has an ending that to a degree could be considered unhappy. But I personally had a pretty good time watching it. You do have to be kind of knowledgeable about Hollywood to get some of the jokes, but apart from a few jokes that are dead (like the whole dead dog plot thread) there are plenty of other jokes non-experts will get and find amusing. I think that a big key that makes this movie work is that almost all of the characters are very likable. They are flawed, and all are seemingly out for something, but they are sympathetic all the same. The movie is an agreeable way to pass the time.

badger-ken I rented this movie to watch on a plane because of the fantastic cast - Baldwin, Broderick, Shalhoub, Collette, Liotta, and on and on. Even the smaller supporting roles are filled by actors like Joan Cusack and Callista Flockhart and Tim Blake Nelson. wow.Unfortunately, this is ruined by an idiot plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot). People make idiotic decisions solely to provide the setup necessary for comic situations to exist. Try though I might, I actually wound up shutting my laptop on this move in favor of reading the Southwest Airlines flight magazine - that says it all.

eschetic-2 Sometimes coming to a film late (either during an actual screening - SOMEWHERE IN TIME is immensely better if you see the first 40 minutes *after* the last hour - or long after it first opens, like my exposure to the 2004 film THE LAST SHOT today) can be an advantage. When you've never heard of a film with stars (ok, mostly TV stars) like Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Toni Colletti, Tony Shaloub, Calista Flockart and Ray Liotta, you have to figure that it had to be a minor piece - possibly a "straight to TV or DVD" release (seven months after a limited U.S. release, that is exactly what happened to THE LAST SHOT) and standards are appropriately reduced.Catching it on TV, it was easy to get caught up in the fun of the expert cast giving their all to a borderline farce based on the actual events surrounding the FBI getting involved (without telling the rest of the cast, crew or creative staff) in making a fake movie as a sting to capture a mafia big. The basic idea has potential but given the cast of expert comedians, the film makers concentrate more on the farcical aspects of movie making than the irony of the fake nature of the project. You can get an idea of the sort of potential they had (bearing in mind the then well known death of actor Vic Morrow under the blades of a falling helicopter) by reading the comment on these boards dated 16 June 2006 entitled "behind the scenes story." For most of the film's length it's easy to become pleasantly engrossed in the amusing character stories - especially Broderick's writer/director and Baldwin's increasingly obsessed FBI agent/producer. The only let down - and the film makers are even able to give it a surprisingly touching coda - is when Ray Liotta's FBI man tells Baldwin that the goal of the mission has been achieved and the "picture" is being shut down - JUST as they are getting set up to make the first and, as it turns out, last shot of the supposed movie (hence the title). It can't help but be a letdown for the audience which has come to root for the characters to overcome the craziness surrounding them and get the movie made. "Cinematicus Interruptus" ...and yet there is that coda in which the actual writers and directors of THE LAST SHOT give all the characters hope and possible happy endings. Whether this is going to add up to a happy ending for the viewer depends on the viewer, but the journey is very nice.

TxMike 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.