Last Orders

Name: Last Orders
Director: Fred Schepisi
Released: 2001

Fred Schepisi

2001

Synopsis

Jack Dodd was a London butcher who enjoyed a pint with his mates for over 50 years. When he died, he died as he lived, with a smile on his face watching a horse race on which he had bet, with borrowed money. But before he died he had a final request, 'Last Orders', that his ashes be scattered in the sea at Margate. The movie follows his mates, Ray, Lenny and Vic and his foster son Vince as they journey to the sea with the ashes. Along the way, the threads of their lives, their loves and their disappointments are woven together in their memories of Jack and his wife Amy

Your Movie Library

Cast

Recommendations

100
The New York Times
Like finding that perfect stage of moderate drunkenness in which the senses are sharpened rather than dulled, and time passes with leisurely grace.
100
Baltimore Sun
It's like Chekhov with a British accent.
90
New Times (L.A.)
The film's biggest strength is the same characteristic that may cause people to underrate it: that the group of friends we watch onscreen feel not like England's greatest actors showing off, but rather a group of friends who have indeed known each other for years through life's little triumphs and large tragedies.
75
New York Daily News
It is remarkably, unsentimentally dramatized by Fred Schepisi, courtesy of the pitch-perfect performances of its ensemble British cast.
75
Miami Herald
It's a warm, skillful excavation of what look like ordinary lives, ones that aren't so simple once you dig a little deeper.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The stars ultimately carry the day, the film cumulatively builds both an emotional power and tender wisdom that's very affecting.
50
New York Post
A ho-hum male weepie/road comedy that's worth watching mostly because of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of England's greatest working-class actors.
50
The New Yorker
Never quite shrugs off its literary manners. [18 & 25 Feb 2002, p. 200]