The Last Supper is a suitable flick to begin this blog, since it features several familiar "A" and "B" list stars. The plot is straight-forward. Five liberal grad student roommates (Ron Elderd, Cameron Diaz, Courtney B. Vance, Annabeth Gish and Jonathan Penner) decide they can better the world by killing off right-wing extremists.
They develop the idea after an ordinary night's dinner with a seemingly good samaratan (Bill Paxton) goes horribly wrong when the guest exposes his bigoted views and incites the others ("Hitler had the right idea"). For his trouble, he gets a knife in the back. (No spoilers here; this all happens within the first ten minutes.)
And so the grads decide, not only to cover up the mess, but to continue down the same grisly path, rationalizing that the world will benefit by killing potential "Hitlers" before they have a chance to hurt others. The method of execution? Invite the unsuspecting right-wing guest to a Sunday night supper of arsenic and old lasagna. If they can't change the conservative's mind by dessert, they pour him (or her) poisoned wine.
The movie is held together by solid directing by Stacy Title and a witty script from Dan Rosen. The irony of the grad students' actions is not lost on the film, and this drives the remainder of the flick. Each successive guest becomes less and less extreme, and some of the grads start to develop a conscience, thus triggering the destruction of their utopian world.
The best strength of the movie is that it's devlishly funny. The opening scene with Bill Paxton as the racist is the highlight. The subtlety in the back and forth banter between Paxton and the bookish Vance is fantastic.
PAXTON: What is it you do again?
VANCE: Don't you know? I'm a professional basketball player.
Another notable performance comes from Ron Pearlman, who plays a Limbaugh-esque conservative talk-show host. The grads delight in the opportunity to invite him to a "last supper" but, from the first course, he proves able to match wits and throw their beliefs into disarray, showing that cooler heads do indeed prevail.
While The Last Supper remains engaging for its entire 92 minutes, the film is not without its problems. Namely, it doesn't know whether it wants to be a dark comedy or a social drama, and so it teeters back and forth between the two. It handles both well, but in the process it loses focus. Also, while the aforementioned actors are excellent, many of the other performances, while not bad by any means, are nothing to write home about.
It should be mentioned that the film covers its political bases well. The conservatives (sans Pearlman) are all one-dimensional and played for laughs, but the liberal grads become more and more unsympathetic as the minutes tick by until we're not sure who to side with. The message? Extremism that silences opposing views is bad no matter which end of the political spectrum it comes from.
Check it out on DVD. And look for a cameo by Jason Alexander. (If you blink, you'll miss it.)
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