Pierce Brosnan proves moving in a nostalgic story from the Second World War

An amalgam of a road trip drama, an emotional memoir and a nostalgic look at the glories of World War II, ‘The Last Rifleman’ wants to be many things. Unfortunately, Kevin Fitzpatrick’s script fails to give these topics the dramatic weight or character specification they require. Terry Loane directs the whole thing with a smooth but rather indifferent hand, unable to overcome the script’s limitations. As the veteran the title refers to, Pierce Brosnan becomes the main reason to watch.

Brosnan is 92-year-old Artie Crawford, who lives in a care home in Northern Ireland and has poignant and disturbing flashbacks to the Second World War, when he fought alongside his best friend and fell in love with the woman he eventually married. Facing the end of his life, he decides to return to Normandy to visit the place that haunts his dreams. Despite the distractingly heavy makeup that aged him by twenty years, Brosnan underpins the film with a warm and steady performance. He stays under surveillance no matter what silly contrivances the plot throws at him. It’s a shame that the film moves further and further away from its star, as it would have been much stronger had it focused on its character.

As Artie travels to France, he relies on the kindness of strangers. Even though he has an expired passport and has diabetes, he still knows how to find his way. He meets a nice French lady (Clémence Poésy) who hides him in her fifth wheel as they cross the canal. There is a friendly boy (Samuel Bottomley) who helps him with the lifts. There is even a nice German (Jürgen Prochnow) who once belonged to the Hitler Youth. Artie’s pleasant encounters with each of these one-dimensional characters mostly serve as vehicles for plot exposition.

To fill in the gaps in Artie’s backstory, Loane consistently resorts to flashbacks. They are so numerous and indistinguishable that they lose their dramatic power. In one scene, “The Last Rifleman” briefly comes to life when John Amos joins Brosnan as another World War II veteran. Fitzpatrick gifts him the script’s only poignant line about how these older men “live with ghosts.” Amos’s delivery evokes the seriousness that the numerous flashbacks could not. But even then, he has to endure a few unfunny jokes about old age and drinking whiskey before he gets the space to show genuine emotion along with Brosnan. It’s understandable that the film doesn’t want to be a sloppy sad story, but these lame jokes and wafer-thin characterizations don’t help that.

Additionally, an unnecessary amount of time is spent at the nursing home while the administrators try to figure out how Archie escaped and where he is. The audience is forced to follow the humorless attempts of Artie’s friend (Ian McElhinney) not to reveal his escape plans. Somehow there’s also a subplot about a journalist (Desmond Eastwood) following Archie as he tries to break this story. Since the film was inspired by a true story, there may be some real-world parallels to this subplot, which reduces the film to pathetic scenes of the journalist awkwardly trying to sleep on a plane and unable to drive his rental car because of the French language. GPS. The passionate power of Brosnan’s performance is diluted by these monotonous fragments from the main story.

“The Last Rifleman” has a simple and straightforward story at its center, while nostalgic for a more enjoyable, morally uncomplicated moment in history. It also contains a tender love story about growing older and living with grief. Yet the filmmakers don’t trust audiences to grapple with these simple elements alone, so they add straightforward humor and underwritten characters, leaving their competent protagonist in a dull film. Whatever life Brosnan tries to bring into the proceedings is undermined by everything surrounding his performance.