Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29158 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-07-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 106 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
With Last Orders, Australian-born writer-director Fred Schepisi has done a fine job of bringing Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel to the screen. Schepisi simplifies the book's complex structure a little (we get flashbacks within flashbacks, often switching time and place mid-way through a line of dialogue), but it's all handled so lucidly and sensitively that we're never left in any doubt as to when and where we are.

The setting is Peckham, South London. Jack, a butcher, has recently died of cancer, leaving instructions that his ashes should be scattered off Margate Pier. Three of his oldest friends and drinking companions, Ray, Lenny and Vic, plus Jack's son Vince, meet at their local pub to carry out his wishes. Jack's widow, Amy, doesn't join them; she has an errand of her own to attend to. During the day's drive to the sea, memories and associations crowd in on each of them, reflections on love and fate and death in richly layered profusion.

Schepisi has assembled a cast of British cinema's most seasoned professionals: Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone. The location settings--South London and Kent--exude authenticity, with Brian Tufano's widescreen photography adding dignity. For Schepisi this is a personal project, and he's clearly in love with his material. Just occasionally the film skirts sentimentality, but it's pulled back from the edge by its humour, honesty and commitment to wry, downbeat realism.

On the DVD Last Orders arrives on DVD in a clean anamorphic 16:9 transfer with Dolby 5.1 sound. There's a good range of extras: interviews and filmographies for all six principals plus the director; a "making of" featurette (everyone genuinely seems to be having a great time); written production notes; and not just the theatrical trailer, but a "trailer evolution video" showing alternative versions, plus ditto for the film's publicity poster. --Philip Kemp

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Theatrical Trailer
Trailer Evolution Video
Behind the Scenes
Director and Main Cast Interviews
Novelist Graham Swift's Biography
Director and Main Cast Filmographies
Production Notes
Marketing Evolution Image Gallery
Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0
Video Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen

Synopsis
Fred Schepisi's adaptation of Graham Swift's prize-winning novel is a quietly graceful portrait of four working-class Brits, bound by years of friendship, that unites some of England's finest actors in a powerful and deeply moving ensemble production. Michael Caine stars as Jack Dodd, the charismatic leader of the group, whose death and last wishes sends his friends on a nostalgic journey from London to Margate to scatter Jack's ashes in the sea. After forty years of warming the seats at their favourite pub, long-time friends and WWII veterans Ray (Bob Hoskins), Lenny (David Hemmings), and Vic (Tom Courtenay) are forced to face the loss of one of their own as they make the "epic" journey accompanied by Jack's flashy, prodigal son Vince (Ray Winstone). Noticeably absent from the group is Jack's long-suffering widow Amy (Helen Mirren), who travels to visit her autistic daughter instead of accompanying her husband's ashes, in a painful journey of her own which sheds light on her complex relationship with Jack. As the four men make their way to Margate, going from pub to pub, they reflect on a lifetime of memories of Jack, which are recreated in a series of multi-layered flashbacks that explore the delicate interweaving of their friendships; full of secrets, resentments, and deeply rooted loyalty. Schepisi masterfully handles the multidimensional plot lines while deftly allowing his talented cast to portray their flawed and profoundly ordinary characters.

Customer Reviews

"Four geezers and a box."
Three friends who have known Jack Dodds, a butcher, for almost fifty years, along with Jack's son Vince, meet at their local South London pub carrying a box containing Jack's ashes. Jack (Michael Caine) has died of heart failure, leaving a last request--that his ashes be cast off the Margate pier, several hours to the south of London. Ray (Bob Hoskins), a gambler; Vic (Tom Courtenay), an undertaker; Lenny (David Hemmings), a former prizefighter and heavy drinker; and Vince (Ray Winstone), Jack's son, a car dealer, set off for Margate in a Mercedes Benz that Vince has borrowed to honor the occasion.

As the men drive south, they reminisce about Jack, joke around, sing songs, irritate each other, and even threaten each other in the emotion of the moment. Director Fred Schepesi, who adapted the screenplay from the Booker Prize-winning novel by Graham Swift, alternates present scenes from the car with contrasting or ironic scenes from Jack's life in the past, contrasting the deadness of the present trip to Margate with the liveliness of the past, showing the relationships among the various characters. Jack's wife Amy (Helen Mirren) has chosen not to come with them for the "ceremony." She is making her weekly visit to their mentally handicapped daughter June, now fifty, whom Jack has never accepted.

The nature of each man's relationship with Jack, with spouses and children, and with each other during World War II and after are all presented in flashback--from Vince's affair with Lenny's daughter, to Ray's relationship with Amy, and Jack's last minute bet with Ray to pay off a debt. As the men's relationships evolve onscreen, the viewer recognizes that these are the kinds of relationships that ordinary men spend their lives developing. The viewer comes to know not only Jack, but also the four men in the car heading south to scatter his ashes, and on a larger, universal scale, other men who have shared long friendships, jokes, and common experiences .

It is a tribute to the cinematography (Brian Trufano) that I didn't really notice it until the film was over--so apropos to the action and thematic development that it never called attention to itself. The original music (Paul Grabowsky) sets the scene at the beginning of the film but does not intrude on the character development or the interior action thoughout the film. The sensational cast in this wonderful ensemble drama, the sensitive directing, the fully developed themes, and the overwhelming feeling that these characters and situations are real make this one of the best films I've seen in ages.

Last Orders, First Class
I laughed. I wept.

'Last Orders' radiates, warmly, all that is good, & some of what's not so good, in our species. At the ending I felt so much like asking, 'More, please?' But there isn't more than what the producer, writer, crew, cast, & we of the audience bring to 'Last Orders'. This is more than a film: it's a reverent monument to people everywhere.

I shall watch 'Last Orders' again and again and again, and hope there will be some such lovely friends who will weep, and then smile, as they fling my ashes into the sea.

Viewing for a contemplative, rainy day afternoon
especially, lifelong friends in the short term? This is a question explored by LAST ORDERS, which in common usage means the final drink requests before the closing of an English pub.

Set in London and southeast England, the film opens with undertaker Vic (Tom Courtney) bringing the ashes of his good friend Jack (Michael Caine) to the local watering hole for a last pint with Jack's other lifelong friends, Ray (Bob Hoskins) and Lenny (David Hemmings), along with Vince (Ray Winstone), the son of Jack and Amy (Helen Mirren). Since Jack had expressed the wish to have his ashes scattered into the English Channel at the seaside city of Margate, the four men pile into a luxury Mercedes selected by Vince from his auto dealership as appropriate to the occasion, and set off for the coast. Amy has declined to come along. Rather, she spends the day visiting June (Laura Morelli), Jack and Amy's [handicapped] daughter, who's spent fifty years in an institution. June is so severely handicapped that she's never once recognized Amy as her mother, though the latter has visited once each week over the decades - alone.

The film's Cockney English dialog is difficult to fully understand until one's ear becomes attuned. For me, this was about a third into the movie. Since much of the speaking during this time occurs over a pint, or in the Benz headed to Margate, there's not much action to give clues as to what's being discussed. (My wife gave up and left me to hang tough.) Indeed, if it wasn't for the flashbacks generated by the memories and conversations among Jack's survivors - some extending back to World War II and before - the film would be a tad dreary.

The stellar cast of LAST ORDERS does a commendable job, along with the actors portraying the characters' younger selves, illustrating several truths surrounding death of advanced age: the old were young (or at least younger) once and full of life and passions; relationships of long standing are often not what they appear on the surface and can conceal deep currents; the lives of the survivors must necessarily go on. For these reasons, I liked this film in the balance, although the ordinariness of the plot is determined from the start by the middle class ordinariness of all the characters. I mean, the lives of Jack, Ray, Lenny, Vic and Amy are perhaps not far removed from the lives of most of that generation - perhaps yours, or that of the elderly folks next door. LAST ORDERS is nowhere near being a great film, but perhaps is a representation of real life that's worth viewing on a contemplative, rainy day afternoon.