After his girlfriend Georgia (Samara Weaving) is murdered by European mobsters, Sam (Zach Avery) flees to Paris to hide out. Years later, he sees a woman in a Hollywood film who he’s certain is Georgia. In L.A. to investigate, he encounters enigmatic Kat (Carly Chaikin), who impulsively decides to help him on his quest. But when Sam meets the mystery actress face-to-face, his life spins out of control.
“Last Moment of Clarity” boasts a fine cast; Samara Weaving, Brian Cox, Udo Kier, Carly Chaikin, and Zach Avery. Unfortunately, directors Colin and James Krisel must have spent the entire shoot on Prozac as the film, with encompasses an intriguing premise, amounts to nothing more than 90 minutes of actors walking around, looking painfully tired, obviously waiting for the movie to finish and I empathize with them completely as I felt exactly the same way watching it.
We are introduced to Sam (Zach Avery), an American living in Paris. Through a series of slow-moving flashbacks, we realize he is living a tortured life. We discover that he was living in New York with his girlfriend Georgia (Samara Weaving), an aspiring actress and photographer. One evening, he picked up her camera and looked across the street and saw Ivan (Udo Kier), a Russian mobster kill a woman and when he realized that Sam saw him committing the deed, he sent his men to kill him. As he struggled with one of the men, Georgia came home from work and was inadvertently shot in the ensuing mayhem. Sam killed the man and in the commotion, a gas line was ruptured. Thinking Georgia was dead, Sam escaped with his life and watched from the street as the apartment went up in flames.
We then cut to the present where Sam is living in Paris, keeping a very low profile. One day a week, he visits the local cinema and while watching a new release, he sees an actress in the film that is the spitting image of Georgia. He immediately looks her up online and is convinced she is his old flame. He makes his way back to Hollywood and while trying to track her down, meets up with an old high school friend, Kat (Carly Chaikin), who agrees to help him with his undertaking, feeling sorry for him because of his outrageous story, thinking he is crazy. When he finally gets the chance to meet her, she doesn’t recognize him and he gradually begins to think that he is indeed going mad. He shacks up with Kat and they begin to fall for each other but one evening in a bar, he is attacked by two Russian mobsters and manages to escape, with Kat’s help, and quickly realizes that his past is coming back to haunt him. Just as he and Kat are about to leave the country together for a new life abroad, a face from his past appears and all hell breaks loose.
The Krisel Brothers were obviously inspired by early Hitchcock but their execution of the plot, action, and character development, or lack thereof, is uninspiring and just plain lazy. The premise is the only interesting aspect of the movie and even with such a talented cast in place, they cannot save the clichéd action (what little there is) and pedestrian dialogue. Samara Weaving has been making quite a name for herself starring in such high-profile pictures such as “Mayhem,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “Ready or Not,” and the most recent “Guns Akimbo,” but sadly, even she cannot save “Last Moment of Clarity.” She and the rest of the cast are reduced to monotonous cliches, unmemorable characters that say and do things that are in no way realistic. While the story itself is very much set in the real world, the characters and their evolution, are stuck in neutral.
Seeing that this is both Colin and James Krisel’s feature film directorial debut, I can give them a pass since it’s their first time out, and hopefully they will learn that having some recognizable Hollywood stars in your film, does not equate to a successful one. If you are looking for a good action thriller, check out the far superior “Guns Akimbo” (you can read my review here), starring Samara Weaving and Daniel Radcliffe, that is one hell of a movie!
Available on DVD, Digital, and VOD May 19th
