Pierce Brosnan? Playing a decrepit veteran of war trying to reunite with the former troops he served alongside? It seems a bit weird a casting choice until you realise Brosnan, the former James Bond veteran, is 70. A shock to the system this may be, it adds little to The Last Rifleman. A quintessentially British problem, this is. To have two films adapting the life of Kevin Fitzpatrick, the man who briefly appeared on BBC for all of two weeks and a bit later likely on a Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe segment is cannon fodder for meandering filmmakers now that his demise is confirmed. Vultures who whiff patriotism and know it can be cashed in on. Smart, but not subtle. The Last Rifleman is part of a bigger problem for the tongue-in-cheek, mothball caps of British cinema.
It has not adapted from this plucky mid-war, pull-your-socks-up feel and it shows. No surprise, though. This is a Terry Loane feature after all. Not the finest mind and certainly not the sharpest after his pungent works of Agatha and the Truth of Murder. Again another sign of the dreary times. Legends of the screen featured within, their name draw still working for the older generation. The Last Rifleman has its claws firmly in Brosnan – though it works for those who remember his grander works as well. It may have been some time but the legendary performer is still on a roll. He captures the lucidity and traumas of war in this later age with a harrowing discomfort. Despite his age and plucky youth elsewhere, he makes himself look palatably sick and withered for The Last Rifleman and strikes through as the best part of this whole charade.
Because that is what this is – a mock-up of themes and tones your grandparents will enjoy nodding off to after a particularly delectable Christmas dinner. All those usual annoying drones to clutch at the heartstrings and yank them out of place, the early morning drams and shots of Bailey’s taking effect by the mid-afternoon and loosening you up into this ill-fitting and tiresome experience. The prosthetics used to make Brosnan look older than the never-aged beast of a man he is in the real world are poor, though the budget for this one does not have much chance of showing him as anything more than an extraordinary weapon.
What a way to find out Clémence Poésy is still kicking around. We are a long way from Bruges. Well, not so much given the relative distance between Normandy and Belgium, but these are a far cry away from the glory days for any of these stars. Their feel for the screen is fading though not so for Brosnan, who surely has more in the tank than this. Wandering around with a stick and an old person plasticine suit better suited to a Tim Robinson sketch, the shell of a former 007 agent is put to the test of filling in for an unavailable Jim Broadbent. A lot of scenes where Brosnan is sat around looking sad in coffee shops draped with bottles of whiskey and Union Jacks. It turns the stomach that so many will fall for this when so few sacrificed so much.
