Last Chance Harvey

A few days before I saw Last Chance Harvey with fellow movie snob CinemaRomantico, we joked that in fact the film only pretended to be a romantic comedy but was in fact an action film along Die Hard lines. Harvey would be an ex CIA operative who has to rescue his daughter when terrorists attack her wedding. Can't you just see the preview? "For former CIA agent Harvey Shine, there's ONE LAST CHANCE to save the day" all spoken by one of those husky deep voiced movie trailer guys. Wouldn't that have been something? There was not however any untruth in the advertising of this one.

Harvey (Dustin Hoffman) is an old, divorced jingle writer who is heading to his daughter's wedding in London. He gets fired, his daughter wants her step dad to give her away and Harvey is and feels alone. In an airport bar he strikes up a conversation with equally lonely Kate Walker(Emma Thompson). She has a close relationship with her mother and apparently no ability to get in a relationship. The two being conversing and walking a la Before Sunrise. Except that we don't hear much of the conversation and what we do is not interesting or very convincing.

As a concept, Before Sunrise worked. We just follow two people having a conversation and we believe they could fall in love. Everyday we have conversations. Sometimes at a bar or a party we meet and talk to someone we connect with and sometimes it turns into love. So why mess with that basic formula? The conversation. This and last year's offender Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist figured we'd buy into the romance with montages and wackiness when we'd be more convinced by a conversation. But frankly, directors or writers seem to think a montage with laughter is more convincing. It isn't.

But despite that I was unimpressed with Thompson and Hoffman's chemistry. Not sure if it was the twenty year age difference or what but the idea of the two was very boring. And then they decided to introduce an arbitrary plot device (one they could have established early on but never did). Because true to formula you can't have a happy ending without an arbitrary break up leading up to it. I wish I'd gotten the action film.