The Last Detail

Hal Ashby's road film and one of the hardest pieces of dialogue writing of the 1970s. Two navy petty officers are ordered to deliver Meadows, who is eighteen, to a military prison. His offence is an attempted theft of forty dollars; his sentence is eight years. The punishment is absurdly heavy and both men know it. The journey stretches to five days. They decide to give the boy one last week: bars, a fight, getting drunk for the first time, a brothel. It never occurs to them to abandon the assignment, and that is where the film's weight comes from; everyone knows what is being done is wrong and nobody stops. Robert Towne wrote the script from Darryl Ponicsan's novel. The density of swearing troubled the studio and Towne refused to soften it. Jack Nicholson plays Buddusky and was Oscar-nominated for it; Randy Quaid plays Meadows and Otis Young plays Mulhall. It was shot in winter on real locations and the cities are deliberately ugly. An important work for anyone who likes 1970s American cinema and road films built on character. For a viewer looking for hope, it promises deliverance nowhere.