Rent The Last Rifleman (2023)

A really disappointing film, based in part on the story of Bernard Jordan's escape to France - The Last Rifleman review by TB

In June 2014, veteran soldier Bernard Jordan became an unlikely celebrity. After "breaking out" in the very loosest sense from his nursing home, he managed to get all the way to France for the D-Day celebrations, which he had always said he was going to attend but never organised. Following the massive media coverage in the UK, it was inevitable that there would be some kind of dramatisation of his adventure.

The strange thing was that two stories, 1 a direct adaptation of the trip & the other with fictional characters influenced by Jordan, were released within weeks of each other. And whilst I absolutely loved The Great Escaper, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson in their final roles, The Last Rifleman to me is pretty much a total write-off, which in no way do I take any pleasure in writing, believe me.

For me, in a nutshell, the biggest issue with this film is this: I grew up watching Pierce Brosnan playing James Bond. I followed him as he ran, jumped, shot & shagged his way through 4 films. He was the embodiment of the alpha-male in every way. And even though it has been 22 years since he last played 007, that is the main memory I have with him.

But what the filmmakers have decided, which is absolutely the worst thing they could have done, is to make Brosnan play Artie as the most frail, unsteady & doddery person imaginable. And when I say that, I mean this is layered on so thickly that very quickly it starts to become annoying & distracting. It's like the polar opposite of when a young actor who gets an action role is pictured repeatedly with either his shirt off or his biceps bulging out, to show he's spent the last year in the gym.

And in addition to this, the script also has multiple characters saying extremely on-the-nose dialogue about how old & frail Artie is, as if to really hammer home that this is Pierce playing an old man, not Bond. The result is that, alongside the standard clichéd scenes of Artie in his nursing home looking after his wife & being on enough medication to keep the local pharmacy in business, I simply felt like I was watching a series of script/world building montages, which isn't something I am interested in sitting through.

I got about 40 minutes in & then just gave up. Sadly, this cannot hold a candle to The Great Escaper, as much as I love Pierce as an actor.

A sister film to THE GREAT ESCAPER based on the same true story, parachuted into an Irish setting - The Last Rifleman review by PV

Watchable but ever-so safe, predictable and thus annoying D-Day veteran tale.

NB: The Last Rifleman is loosely based on the true story of British D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan, who left his care home in England to travel to France. Another film based on Jordan's story, The Great Escaper, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, was released a few weeks earlier.

So you wait ages for a film about an old boy returning to the Normandy beaches and then two come along at once eh?

The added twee oirish-ness annoyed me often in this, epecially as this is Northern Ireland AKA British and all the British Isles too, even though the teen thugs on the streets are shown to try and balance the tweeness.

Also annoying was the utterly gratuitous shoe-horning of a black US GI meeting the main character in France - who has just got a medal for being the first African-American on the beaches on 6 June 1944 (Omahaa and Utah were the US beaches; Brits and Canadians were on Gold, Juno and Sword). Sadly, THE GREAT ESCAPER was also obsessed with tickbox diversity and parachuting people of colour into the cast and background, which is not realistic at all (ever been to Normandy? Well I have! Brixton or Hounslow it ain't).

In WWII the US army was segregated so the black (or 'N-gro) units as called then, (have to use a dash so snowflakes do not have a meltdown and report the review) were separate and DID NOT take part in front line fighting at all; they had support auxiliary roles, loads of African Americans in the medical core or catering or logistics/transport/supplies or here putting up barrage balloons. What worries me is now kids are taught at school that the D-Day beaches were a multiculti operation, with lots of black and brown faces. THAT IS JUST NOT TRUE. Saving Private Ryan got it right. I dread to think of a woke remake, maybe 40% black/Asian and 50% female, plus wheelchairs of course - it could almost be the BBC newsroom!). ALL added to boost the US PR no doubt and get that funding?

There is maybe room for a separate movie about that black barrage balloon unit BUT there already have been many movies about black-only units in WWII in the segregated US army/. Plenty of Jewish troops fought and died and also what Americans call Hispanics, which is what we Europeans call 'white'.

Interesting, the German soldiers defending the beaches on D-Day and killing Americans and Brits were much more diverse and ethnic, as many were central Asians or from parts of the USSR the Nazis invaded - such as Ukraine or further easy. D-Day at Normandy was a surprise attack (watch OPERATION MINCEMEAT or the better THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS to see how the Allies fooled the Germans into thinking the landings would be to the south). SO the ethnic German troops were elsewhere and the beaches of Normandy were defended by many central Asian troops with high cheekbones who looked like Yul Brynner (A Russian who wonderfully played the King of Siam though these days the woke gestapo would make that VERBOTEN in their pc fascism eh?). US GIs were often puzzled when they took prisoners who they said looked 'Chinese'.

As for UK troops. In 1939 there were ONLY 6000 black people in the UK (and some very well off upper class Asians - incl 2 Asian MPs in the 1920s and many at top public schools). Of a population of 44 million. GI mixed race babies made that 8000 at the end of the war. So SHOW THAT not a diversity-worshipping fantasy of what YOU the woke taliban want the past and history to be. Very Hitler or Staling, rewriting the past how you want it, thee knows...

This all matters in terms of accuracy so I find the endless shoehorning of race issues and non-white characters into old stories silly and wrong - because the young and ignorant will believe that is the truth.

But as a film it passes the time, though I prefer THE GREAT ESCAPER which I gave 3 stars.

This gets 2.5 stars. Good in parts.