Last Moment Of Clarity: Starring Samara Weaving And Carly Chaikin The Film Is Simply Junk Dressed Up As Suspense

I didn’t like the look of this film from the outset. The trailer looked phoney and put-on as if the characters were in it between other more valuable work because of the zeroes on the cheque. I am sorry,  but no amount of money—and I don’t see much of that in this discernibly low-budget project—should persuade actors to do a film as improbably plotted as this. The best-known actor in this film after Brian Cox(who spends his time playing the hero’s sugar daddy) is Samara Weaving who plays a mysterious woman who is presumed killed by our hero Sam played by Zach Avery (arrested earlier this year for a multi-million investment fraud). Sam spends his time in near-empty theatres watching movies that look more interesting than what we have here. During one such outing, he comes across an actress on the screen named Lauren who looks exactly like his “dead” girlfriend.

So far so good. Here is where the plot thickens, sickens and shrivels up. Sam now follows the actress to her new film’s premiere, where very conveniently, he runs into an old college friend Kat (Carly Chaikin) who, even more conveniently, has harboured a secret crush on Sam, who helps him from that point onwards with guns, contacts, meals, comfort kisses, cuddles, etc etc.

I am not very sure why Kat is being so generous with Sam, or why they stalk the actress together from premiere to party to hotel. I am not even sure why we are sitting watching this ridiculous misfire about a  man who loses his girlfriend to the Russian mafia and then rescues her from their clutches by barging into the mafia boss’ hospital room and threatening him. Mafia Boss immediately calls his boys back.

It all looks like someone’s idea of a suspenseful gangster drama gone completely awry. While the performances are possibly passable (can’t tell for sure because everyone looks preoccupied, with the plot or something else, can’t tell) no actors involved with the plot.

When the story moves to Paris there is some visual relief for us. But budgets being what they are these days,  the narrative quickly scampers indoors for a  lights-out fright-climax where the aforementioned Russian mafia comes to get poor Georgia/Lauren.

The climactic shootout is mostly in the dark where you can’t make out who is who. But that’s okay. You really don’t want to know. This film’s script suffers from an acute case of malnourishment. It has the locations and actors. But it doesn’t know what to do with them. They are led through a  shallow maze of identity crises, in the hope that the characters will find themselves and their way out of the mess.

No such miracle happens. I kept waiting for that promised moment of clarity which would have explained why BookMyShow invested in this losing proposition. A death wish, perhaps? Don’t waste your time killing yourself with boredom with this one.

Directed by  James Krusel and Colin Krisel, Last Moment Of Clarity gets 1 and a half stars!