The Last Movie Star

Vic Edwards was a star once. Now he lives alone and his dog has died. An invitation comes in the post: a festival in Nashville will give him a lifetime achievement award. A plane ticket is enclosed. Vic goes. A young woman meets him at the airport; she is the sister of the man giving the award and her car is old. The festival is upstairs in a bar. There are fifteen people in the room. Vic wants to leave without taking the award. Then he decides something and goes to Knoxville, where he was born. Adam Rifkin writes and directs. Burt Reynolds plays Vic and Ariel Winter the young woman; Chevy Chase and Clark Duke are in the cast. It is an American production. The film uses footage from Burt Reynolds's own old films; as the character looks back, real archive appears on screen. Reynolds plays a character very close to his own career and the resemblance is deliberate. It is among his last leading parts; the actor died a few years later. The matter it treats is looking back; the film builds no nostalgia and does not hide the character's regrets. The narrative uses the road film shape and rests on the relation between two characters. The young character's line is its weak side and runs to type. The ending offers no easy reconciliation. Its limit is the production; the scale is small, the script explanatory in places, and the emotional dose high. Who it is for: viewers who like portraits of actors and late career films. Who it is not for: it is sad, small in scale, and the ending heavy.