THE STORY – An ex-DEA operative must return to the mountains of South America in an effort to find his missing niece and nephew, following the brutal murders of their diplomat parents. Enlisting the help of a washed-up junkie war photographer, the only person to have seen the face of the killers, he sets out, determined to find the children and the truth, but soon learns he must also face the ghosts of his past.
THE CAST – Stuart Martin, Fra Fee, Costanza Andrade, Marlon Moreno, Quique Mendoza, Gustavo Angarita, Ed Hughes, Pedro Calvo-Anca, Mia Calvo, Jackie Kay & José Restrepo
THE TEAM – Zack Snyder (Director) & Kurt Johnstad (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 135 Minutes
If you’re naming filmmakers who have broken barriers within the cultural consciousness of the past decade, Zack Snyder’s name will inevitably pop up. His imprint on the industry is clear, with films like “300” and “Man of Steel” that have almost guaranteed some funding for whatever project he works on next. Snyder’s time in the superhero machine has garnered support that has grown like a tumor, even spawning the “Snyder Cut” of “Justice League,” which has led troll-like obsessives to hope that he’ll one day step back behind the camera for a spandex-clad project. Yet this decade, Snyder has moved in the opposite direction, going all in on his failed maximalist mega-franchise “Rebel Moon,” a space opera that collapsed before it even got the chance to find its audience.
Snyder, a filmmaker who has often been on the blunt end of critical reception, has had time to reevaluate what his next film would be. Instead of digging his heels further into bombastic genre pieces, he decided to scale back with his long-term passion project, “The Last Photograph.” The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, has the rare privilege of doing what no film has done at the festival in some time, or maybe ever. It reveals a filmmaker no longer capable of making anything worthwhile for someone willing to devote hours of their life to this medium. “The Last Photograph” is a full-blown disaster, with Snyder tapping into all his worst traits as an artist and operating on a cataclysmic level that reaffirms why the film doesn’t have distributors lining up to buy it.
The narrative, which, again, is the most scaled-back Snyder’s been in years, finds this film opening similarly to one of his previous features, “Army of the Dead,” where Fra Free’s heroin-loving photographer Joe Wallace is receiving fellatio in the midst of a gig. What starts as a brief quickie turns into the best decision of his life as a squad of guerrilla militants downs an entire celebration upstairs, leaving Joe to witness the slaughter of women and children through the high of his camera lens. One of these images makes its way to Stuart Martin’s Ethan Black, a retired DEA agent consumed with vengeance after he lost the love of his life, brother, and nephew, and hears of the possible survival of his daughter. Ethan, knowing Joe was a witness to this massacre, enlists the photographer’s help to navigate Colombia’s hostile terrain in search of retribution.
If we’re being frank, it’s a simplistic story told in the shoddiest way possible. Kurt Johnstad’s screenplay is less than bare-bones, with characters regurgitating direct feelings or exposition needed to move this stagnant film forward minute by minute. The first hour of “The Lost Photograph,” after heinously depicting the gruesome slaughter of people of all ages, finds Martin’s character wallowing around in the typical masculine-heavy conflicting emotions that drive him to want to push himself into the darkest recesses of his mind. Martin (who looks like the guy who Snyder called because Hugh Jackman didn’t answer) embraces the steely silence that Snyder blankets Martin with, because his characterization is as layered as cheap cardboard. The first hour is lethargic as audiences watch Ethan wallow in sadness, as Snyder pulls from old-school Nolan bag-of-tricks territory with the dead-wife trope, creating hollow montages of Costanza Andrade that keep flashing through his mind.
The two leads further build an unearned rapport as Snyder takes them on a long, scenic route through the rough terrain of the Colombian mountaintops. Ethan and Joe encounter all types of threats including guerrilla members and straight-up racist depictions of Indigenous tribesman engaging in brutal ceremonies, while their leader wears a hat like Slash. Snyder’s direction abandons his usual frills of bombastic visual effects and egregious amounts of slow motion for a more grounded atmosphere. Despite this reevaluation of his skill set, his direction remains lackluster, a fact reaffirmed by his pivot to shooting his own films, one of the worst decisions of Snyder’s career. While some of the Colombian mountain scenery is stunning, the film is shot like a DTV action film, reinforced by terrible visual effects that make every mist of blood or muzzle flash look like it was pulled from the Adobe Creative Suite.
Even Free and Martin’s performances are abysmal, with ridiculous dialogue that makes each of them wander foolishly on screen. Free’s character – who loves seeing the world through the lens of his camera – adds nothing to Snyder’s discussion of voyeurism. Martin fails to bring any sort of dramatic heft to his role; he mainly grunts for the entirety of the film when he’s not speaking. He can’t even convince the audience that his long-lasting lust for his brother’s sister is enough to drive him to kill hordes of men out of vengeance. The only thing audiences should be thankful for is that Snyder keeps his nauseating slow motion at bay. In exchange, he punishes us with a laborious watch that stoops low in its treatment of viewers and characters alike, at least everyone but the two traditionally-handsome action figure actors front and center. By the end, one wishes for mercy after being bludgeoned mentally as Snyder hammers home a terrible attempt at a metaphor through the vessel of a yellow butterfly. Ultimately, “The Last Photograph” is 135 minutes of moving images that only takes time away that would’ve been better served doing literally anything else.
