I noticed that "The Last Detail" has a very respectable overall IMDb score of 7.5. However, despite this, the film left me very, very cold.
The film is about two knuckle-headed shore patrolmen (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) who are ordered to escort a prisoner (Randy Quaid) cross country to prison. As for the prisoner, he's a real enigma and never is particularly easy to understand. However, instead of taking him directly to prison in Portsmouth, they take him on a little holiday--taking him on a sightseeing tour of D.C., getting him drunk as well as to a prostitute. It seems that these two guys kind of like the prisoner and feel sorry for him--though none of this would really explain their actions throughout the movie.
If you like films with very little in the way of a traditional plot, then you might like this film a bit more than I did. It's really a modified buddy film--but with some nontraditional elements. Of course, a buddy film with lots of profanity (even by the looser early 1970s standards) and boobs. As for all this cursing, I can understand it--navy guys talk that way I am sure. However, this also makes it a film NOT to watch with your mother, children or minister! Overall, a rather direction-less film with somewhat unlikeable characters. For me, it's among Jack Nicholson's weaker films--though as I said above, apparently I am in the minority on this one.
By the way, catch the irony when the Buddhist lady exhorts Randy Quaid to run from the law in Canada. Talk about art imitating life!
The film is about two knuckle-headed shore patrolmen (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) who are ordered to escort a prisoner (Randy Quaid) cross country to prison. As for the prisoner, he's a real enigma and never is particularly easy to understand. However, instead of taking him directly to prison in Portsmouth, they take him on a little holiday--taking him on a sightseeing tour of D.C., getting him drunk as well as to a prostitute. It seems that these two guys kind of like the prisoner and feel sorry for him--though none of this would really explain their actions throughout the movie.
If you like films with very little in the way of a traditional plot, then you might like this film a bit more than I did. It's really a modified buddy film--but with some nontraditional elements. Of course, a buddy film with lots of profanity (even by the looser early 1970s standards) and boobs. As for all this cursing, I can understand it--navy guys talk that way I am sure. However, this also makes it a film NOT to watch with your mother, children or minister! Overall, a rather direction-less film with somewhat unlikeable characters. For me, it's among Jack Nicholson's weaker films--though as I said above, apparently I am in the minority on this one.
By the way, catch the irony when the Buddhist lady exhorts Randy Quaid to run from the law in Canada. Talk about art imitating life!