“Last Call” follows a suicidal alcoholic on the anniversary of his son’s death. When he attempts to call a crisis hotline, a misdial connects him with a single mother working as the night janitor at a local community college. The split-screen feature showcases both characters in real-time as they navigate a life-changing conversation.
The film opens with Scott (Daved Wilkins) sitting at a bar as it closes down, while Beth (Sarah Booth) drives to her job as a night janitor at a community college. She is concerned because it’s nearly midnight and her sons have not returned home.
After Scott persuades the bartender to sell him a fifth of Scotch for the road, he stumbles to his apartment and continues to imbibe. As his depression grows, Scott gets on the phone to call what he believes is the suicide prevention hotline. Instead, he reaches Sarah at the start of her shift. Despite the mix-up, they both stay on the phone, a little curious. Slowly, they each reveal aspects of their lives to the other – ironically the kind of openness that only strangers would indulge.
Abandoned by her husband, Beth listens sympathetically to Scott’s plight, asking probing questions, which periodically anger Scott in the process. His wife divorced him after the death of their son, and there is more than a hint that Scott was responsible. He is further troubled because his incessant drunkenness also estranged him from his daughter. Past AA meetings notwithstanding, Scott remains obsessed with how to make a good cocktail on this, the anniversary of his son’s demise.
Things go from bad to worse. Despite Beth’s frantic attempts to variously intervene on the other line for help, not much can be done.
This type of indie production inevitably invites comparisons to the excellent one extended scene “Locke,” written and directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy. That 2013 film also rendered an urgent tale of desperate people trying to make some sense of their flawed lives, though in the case of “Last Call,” there seems not much to hope for by the time the ending credits roll.
Co-written by and starring Daved Wilkins, and co-written and directed by Gavin Michael Booth, the top-bottom, left-right split-screen filmed in two simultaneous one-shot takes showcases an interesting format. Ultimately, however, the approach comes off a little too much on the experimental side. Still, the video quality presented on Blu-ray disc is excellent, as is the haunting score by Adrian Ellis, which complements the narrative nicely throughout.
The film puts forward a real-time vignette of a character study that illuminates the human condition by examining two desperate people seeking to come to terms with chronic isolation. “Last Call” offers audiences a saddening tale told with steely resolve and conviction.
Now available on Blu-ray & DVD from Mill Creek Entertainment
