THE LAST DETAIL @ 50

 

Road movies are about self-discovery. The dialogue is doing the driving and it goes from personal shards to conciliation and order. So, if you want to do one that doesn't just play the formula you need an angle. In 1973, the USA was exhausted by the war in Vietnam. Sending the military on the road for the inevitable conflict and resolution would have felt like facing it. Buddusky (Badass) and Mulhall (Mule) are two navy time servers, dozing at the barracks, waiting for orders. They are picked to escort a seaman to a military prison for an offence that comes across as adolescent impulse but gets an eight year sentence. Well, it's a ride and it gets them out of stasis. The boy, Meadows, is an unpredictable mess, attempting unconsidered escape now or curling back into his shell then. Said it was gonna be a ride.

As the trio set off they are couched in the music of order, Sousa marches and massed drums, sometimes loud enough to swamp the dialogue. As Meadows' chaos agent activates all that loosens up and, while the older men give advice and organise some rites of passage for the boy and he, in turn, inspires them with the anarchy of his youth. The big bad world looms up to meet them in the final act but everyone meets it with a little extra sass.

Hal Ashby is one of those directors with a good sized rap sheet of influential classics but very little to point to by way of trademarks. Like John Huston or Stephen Soderberg, it's only clear that a movie was directed by him after you've seen it. There is so very little of the great whimsy of Harold and Maude here. The shooting style is verite and grainy and might remind you of Bob Rafelson. Daylight looks natural but low light settings like the hotel room look as dingy as they would if you were in them. This is a world where the impulses are pushed back by the physical and cultural winter of a nation in paralysis. When Meadows conveys his crucial message using the semaphore he barely knew before it is against the stark white background of a snowed under park and even the low cloud cover seems to resist this moment of defiance and liberty. Oh really, was that a Hal Ashby movie? Makes sense.

Jack Nicholson was already cast as Badass (it was he who sent the screenplay to Ashby). He had already emerged with his career persona flying in Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. Ashby exercises less constraint on Nicholson, allowing him more flashpoints and, while not as unfettered as Foreman had him in Cuckoo's Nest, he comes across as more volatile than his tired character probably would. But, hey, it's Jack, still young and pushing buttons which is why we still pay to see him.

Less obvious casting is the young Randy Quaid as Meadows. His gangling two metre masculinity might seem the opposite of what's needed (Bud Cort tried for the role) but he wears it as though he's ashamed of it, unaware of the power it gives him. Similarly, Otis Young as Mule betrays his buff appearance by showing the strain of a life at the arm's length of racism. His character plays confidence rather than expresses it, and he is all too aware of the hostility that surrounds him in spite of the uniform. At least in the navy he has to follow the orders.

Ashby avoids the cuteness that at times threatens to lead other outings like Harold and Maude and Being There close to collapse. Instead, the absurdity of the situation, a human getting his youth ripped out by the root for what might have served as an educating moment in his life. That he might be headed to brutalisation before he has had opportunity at life is a thought constantly mounting throughout and the conclusion refuses to alleviate it. And that's the big bad world of verite and military life, offered to an audience sick of seeing it on tv at dinner time. Yes, they're in the navy where they have to salute the most incompetent officers but they've just had a refresher course in the field of how to keep in touch with everything they've retained that is still themselves. And that's a Hal Asbhy movie.