It's only the beginning of June and already the New York Film Festival has us looking into next fall and the start of their annual event. And the movie that will be kicking things off this year will be Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying, with the first image of stars Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne arriving today.
Pitched as a quasi-sequel to Jack Nicholson and Hal Ashby's 1973 film, The Last Detail, it stars Carell, Cranston, and Fishburne as Vietnam War vets on a road trip to bury one's son, an early casualty of the Iraq War.
Being chosen to open NYFF is a pretty big deal. You might recall the festival broke new ground last year by giving the honor to Ava Duvernay's stunning documentary, 13th.
Here's a synopsis: In Richard Linklater’s lyrical road movie, as funny as it is heartbreaking, three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets—soft-spoken Doc (Steve Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Bryan Cranston), and quietly measured Mueller (Laurence Fishburne)—reunite to perform a sacred task: the proper burial of Doc’s only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraqi Invasion. As this trio of old friends makes its way up the Eastern seaboard, Linklater gives us a rich rendering of friendship, a grand mosaic of common life in the USA during the Bush era, and a striking meditation on the passage of time and the nature of truth. To put it simply, Last Flag Flying is a great movie from one of America’s finest filmmakers.
Last Flag Flying will open NYFF on September 28th, before Amazon Studios releases it into theaters on November 17th.
