last call 2002 movie review

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Challengers Link to Challengers
• I Saw the TV Glow Link to I Saw the TV Glow
• Música Link to Música

New TV Tonight

• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• The Jinx: Season 2
• The Big Door Prize: Season 2
• Them: Season 2
• Knuckles: Season 1
• Velma: Season 2
• Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
• Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
• We're Here: Season 4

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1 Link to Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

All Zendaya Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Video Game TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

Poll: Most Anticipated Movies of May 2024

• Trending on RT
• Marvel Movies In Order
• Seen on Screen
• Most Anticipated Movies of May
• Play Movie Trivia

Where to Watch

Watch Last Call with a subscription on Prime Video, or buy it on Apple TV.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Henry Bromell

Jeremy Irons

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Neve Campbell

Frances Kroll

Sissy Spacek

Zelda Fitzgerald

Shannon Lawson

Sarah Kroll

Samuel Kroll

More Like This

Critics reviews.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

On November 19, 1953, poet Robert Lowell wrote to his friend and fellow poet, Elizabeth Bishop:

"I guess you’ve heard about Dylan Thomas ’s death. He died four days after a brain stroke which seems to have immediately finished his mind. The details are rather gorgeously grim. He was two days incommunicado with some girl on Brinnin’s staff in some New York hotel. Then his wife came ... and tried quite literally to kill and sleep with everyone in sight. Or so the rumors go in Chicago and Iowa City. It’s a story that Thomas himself would have told better than anyone else; I suppose his life was short and shining as he wanted it — life, alas, is no joke."

As the legend (most probably apocryphal) goes, Dylan Thomas' final words before collapsing in the Chelsea Hotel were, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies. I think that’s the record." People who were actually there in the White Horse Tavern that day dispute this, but those mythical 18 whiskeys are the organizing principle of Steven Bernstein ’s "Last Call," with Rhys Ifans as the Welsh poet drinking his way into delirium, surrounded by a hooting crowd of admirers and concerned "friends." This is well-trod ground (most recently, in 2014's " Set Fire to the Stars "), perhaps because there's something garish and hypnotic about Thomas' death and those final words, in all their sickly bravado. "Last Call," also written by Bernstein, takes the legend as truth, and expands on it, making Thomas' march towards that 18th drink a deliberate piece of performance art. "Last Call"'s original title was "Dominion," after one of Thomas' most famous poems, "And death shall have no dominion" (quoting St. Paul's epistle to the Romans). "Dominion" is a far better title than the generic "Last Call," but the problems here go beyond the title. Watching a man drink himself to death, seemingly on purpose, is a pretty tough whiskey to swallow, even if he is articulate and dramatic, even if he is a famous poet, and even if he is played with a shamanistic power by Rhys Ifans. 

Dylan Thomas was always more shaman than poet, and his poetry readings were major events. He didn't just have admirers. He had fans. He wasn't just a well-known poet. He was a "star." Like Anne Sexton was a star, like Edna St. Vincent Millay was a star: these poets crafted public personae, like movie stars do, and they wove spells over their audiences, in the same way Jim Morrison did, or Mick Jagger did. By the time period covered in "Last Call," Thomas already felt the emptiness of much of what he was doing. He knew he was a ham. He felt there was something fraudulent in how things were going. He admitted it himself once: "I'm a freak user of words, not a poet." In his mind, the American reading tours were cynical cash grabs, and he drank up all the profits anyway, leaving his wife and children at home in Wales, destitute. It was during one of these tours that Thomas stopped off in New York, to attend early rehearsals for a production of his verse play Under Milk Wood . He was already extremely unwell.

"Last Call" jumps around in time, and Bernstein switches up the styles, moving from desaturated color to black-and-white, bringing in fuzzy hallucinations and using rear-projection for some of the New York scenes. There's a lot of cross-cutting between scenes and locations and times, moving from Thomas giving readings at different colleges, back to Wales, where his wife Caitlin ( Romola Garai ) writes increasingly furious letters, begging for money. Meanwhile, Thomas' "handler" and eventual biographer John Malcolm Brinnin ( Tony Hale ) and Thomas' cynical doctor Dr. Fenton ( John Malkovich , who also produced), commiserate over what to do with their increasingly incapacitated client. Zosia Mamet plays Penelope, a young Vassar student, who's booked Thomas to come and speak at her college (incurring the wrath of the administration, who consider Thomas a dangerous libertine. They're not entirely wrong). Penelope loves Thomas with the passion of a fangirl, declaring to a friend, "I love everything about him. I'd have his child if he asked me to." Her friend says, "You are joking." She says, "Which part." 

All of these characters converge on Thomas as he holds court at the White Horse Tavern, being poured enormous shots of whiskey by bartender Carlos ( Rodrigo Santoro ), who has never heard of the words, "Okay, sir, I'm cutting you off." The film is broken up with grim time-stamps—"10:00 a.m.," "4:00 p.m."—showing Thomas' progression into that good night. Caitlin, whose behavior was even more scandalous than her husband's, shows up in a hallucination, " Pleasantville "-style, she in color surrounded by black-and-white. Sometimes there are flashbacks to Thomas' childhood, a small boy running through wide snow fields. It's a very busy film, stylistically. 

Most of the actors do very well in what are fairly thankless roles. Hale stands on the sidelines, watching helplessly as Thomas drinks himself to death, and also wondering if his idol has had a chance to read his manuscript yet. (One wants to say to Brinning; "Why are you giving a man on a bender the only existing copy of your manuscript? Have you ever met an alcoholic before?") The "Caitlin" sections are not all that successful, particularly since Garai is forced to read the letters she's writing out loud. This device would work beautifully onstage. On film it looks phony and presentational. 

Ifans, who recently played Captain Cat in a film adaptation of Thomas' Under Milk Wood , is glorious in the role, and the film is filled with shots of him reading Thomas' poetry during the preceding American tour: "Fern Hill," "A Child's Christmas in Wales," "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." Audio clips of Thomas reading his work give a feel for the spell he wove on his audiences. Thomas didn't speak so much as he sang; he didn't articulate so much as he rode the waves of sound he produced. Ifans captures Thomas' thrumming recitative style, which was more about creating a mood than conveying meaning. Bernstein's repeat shots of college girls staring up at Ifans, agog, rapt, are eloquent. This is more like the spoken-word poetry jams of later decades, the coffee-house folk-music culture of the 1960s. No wonder college kids were caught up in Thomas' magic. (It has always struck me as interesting that Thomas' most famous poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night" was a villanelle, one of the most rigorous rules-based forms in existence. When Thomas wanted to, he could submit to the rules, and he did it brilliantly!) 

Too late in the game, the film suddenly gets fascinating, albeit in an esoteric way, as Carlos the bartender moves from out behind the bar and takes over the narrative. Carlos reveals hidden depths, first in a spontaneous tango with the disillusioned Penny, and then in a brutal monologue where he cuts Thomas down to size. All along, Carlos has pretended to not be familiar with Thomas' work. Now it is clear Carlos knows it very well and finds it extremely wanting. He says, echoing many of Thomas' critics, that Thomas "mistakes sound for substance." Then he says, and it's the killshot, "You and I both know there's nothing there but the cadence of the language. Not Auden. Not Yeats." 

Is Carlos real? Or is he Thomas' worst fears made manifest? In his essay "Dylan the Durable," Seamus Heaney wrote of "Do not go gentle into that good night," "This is a son comforting a father; yet it is also, conceivably, the child poet in Thomas himself comforting the old ham he had become; the neophyte in him addressing the legend; the green fuse addressing the burnt-out case." 

This is an intriguing thing to consider when you read the poem, and it's something Ifans appears to understand intimately in his performance: The emptiness behind all those words, those freaky words that came so easily to him, that added up to so little. 

If you find Thomas fascinating, as I do, then there's a lot here to chew on. But "Last Call" is a pretty grim watch. Not "gorgeously grim." Just grim, end-stop. 

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Now playing

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon

Clint worthington.

Simon Abrams

Late Night with the Devil

Matt zoller seitz.

Monica Castillo

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Glenn kenny, film credits.

Last Call (2020)

101 minutes

Rhys Ifans as Dylan Thomas

John Malkovich as Dr. Felton

Rodrigo Santoro as Carlos

Tony Hale as Brinnan

Romola Garai as Caitlin Thomas

Zosia Mamet as Penny

Jeremy Ferdman as Michael

• Steven Bernstein

Cinematographer

• Antal Steinbach
• Adam Bernstein
• Steven Bramson

Latest blog posts

Speed Kills: On the 25th Anniversary of Go

Joanna Arnow Made Her BDSM Comedy for You

The Movies That Underwent Major Changes After Their Festival Premiere

Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives Is A Spinoff Stuck In Limbo

Where to Watch

Jeremy Irons (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Neve Campbell (Frances Kroll) Sissy Spacek (Zelda Fitzgerald) Shannon Lawson (Sarah Kroll) Paul Hecht (Samuel Kroll) Natalie Radford (Sheilah Graham) Kathleen Munroe (Scottie) Brian Paul (Dr. Mahoney) Marium Carvell (Lucy) Roman Podhora (Bartender)

Henry Bromell

Renowned writer F. Scott Fitzgerald is living the last months of his life with his youthful secretary, confidant and protege who later wrote a memoir of their time together.

Recommendations

Advertisement

Film Details

Brief synopsis, cast & crew, henry bromell, natalie radford, marium carvell, jeremy irons, neve campbell, technical specs.

The story of the final months of author F. Scott Fitzgerald as told by Frances Kroll, the young woman who was his secretary at the time. In 1939, Frances, an aspiring writer, finds work as a secretary to F. Scott Fitzgerald after promising to keep secret a new novel he is beginning about the movie industry. Despite his literary genius, Fitzgerald is haunted by fantasies of his institutionalized wife Zelda, is burdened with a drinking problem, and is involved in a tumultuous relationship with his mistress Sheilah Graham. Frances is sensitive to his problems and becomes a trusted confidante. With the support of Frances, Fitzgerald is able to write what critics call potentially his best work -- "The Last Tycoon." Unfortunately, Fitzgerald dies before the novel is completed, but through Frances's efforts it is published in its incomplete form.

Kathleen Munroe

Shannon lawson.

Sissy Spacek

Helen bartlett, john dondertman, stephanie gorin, jeffrey jur, frances kroll ring, neil mandelberg, brian tyler, miscellaneous notes.

Nominated for the 2003 Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in Television Writing (Adapted Long Form) by the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

Winner of the 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award (Movie of the Week, Miniseries or Pilot - Basic or Pay) from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

Winner of the 2003 Prism Award for Performance in a TV Movie or Miniseries (Neve Campbell) from the Entertainment Industries Council (EIC). Also nominated for Performance in a TV Movie or Miniseries (Jeremy Irons) and TV Movie or Miniseries.

Aired in United States May 25, 2002

Aired in United States September 2, 2003

Sign Up now to stay up to date with all of the latest news from TCM.

Your Browser is Not Supported

To view this content, please use one of the following compatible browsers:

Safari v11+

Firefox Quantum

Microsoft Edge

Ratings & Reviews

Cast & Info

Collections, similar titles.

Last Call (II) (2002)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

Last Call Review: Closing Time

For a movie as juvenile and hollow as Last Call appears from its promotional material, it possesses a strange amount of heart. The film stars Jeremy Piven as Seamus "Mick" McDougal, a successful real estate developer who made it out of his blue-collar neighborhood in Philadelphia only to be pulled right back to the homestead when his mother passes away and the pub his father owns is floundering.

It's a movie that sees itself as a comedy first, indulging far too much in some truly regressive "bro" humor. But beneath that clumsy façade and its lower-budget aesthetic, it's clear the filmmakers wanted to craft a sincere ode to the old neighborhood bars of their past, acknowledging and exalting them as the formative foundation of so many lives.

It's just a shame that, in doing so, they could not find a better balance between accurately depicting the kind of cringeworthy jokes you're likely to constantly hear in such establishments with pursuing a more earnest exploration of gentrification and the dramatic difficulties inherent in returning home a changed man.

The result is a movie hobbled by tonal whiplash. It is a film that draws the viewer in with moments of genuine pathos before gobsmacking them with repetitive gags of questionable comedic value.

Funny, but not funny ha-ha

When we meet Mick (Piven), director Paoli Pilladi introduces the dichotomy between his upbringing and his exodus from the neighborhood by contrasting sweet moments of him as a youth (like getting teased by his degenerate friends) with his loftier present life (getting a back massage from SNL vet Cheri Oteri.) There's a twinkle of sweetness to the childhood flashback that suggests Last Call is going to be close in tone to, say, something like Kevin Smith 's Jersey Girl , a John Hughesian dramedy that is heartfelt first and only relies on humor for relief.

But within ten minutes of Mick arriving back at the Bucket, the pub his father Laurence (Jack McGee) owns and lives in, that illusion is shattered rather quickly.

Bruce Dern is there as Coach, a mainstay at the bar with a tab the length of a giraffe's neck. So are Mick's childhood friends Whitey (Jamie Kennedy wearing an omnipresent and outdated bluetooth headset) and Paddy (Chris Kerson, splitting the difference between young Billy Crystal and old Jon Gries). His brother Laurence "Dougal" McDougal (Zach McGowen) arrives late to the wake, in handcuffs, after waking up drunk in his car.

After a tense scene between Mick and Dougal arguing over the responsible brother abandoning his clan and the ne'er-do-well sibling deflecting his obvious failings, Pilladi cuts outside the Bucket to a cop car covered in Post-It notes with vulgar drawings on them and a small group of children scurrying away. This juxtaposition is the film in a nutshell.

When the movie takes the time to unpack Mick's baggage about leaving the neighborhood and his frustrations with his family, it functions surprisingly well. There's a running subplot about a rival real estate developer, Mick's boss and what appears to be a deep corruption scheme ravaging the neighborhood. Within that framework, there's plenty of room to wring some drama from Mick's complicity and how he became the kind of person his former friends despise.

Instead of digging into that in a meaningful way, however, the film repeatedly gets bogged down by diversions surrounding Dougal, Whitey and Paddy's childish activities, principally among them an ongoing "sex bet" whose ultimate victor will receive the greatest possible MacGuffin, a VHS tape recording of a little league baseball game the trio has been obsessively debating their entire adult lives.

While Kennedy avails himself quite well through the film's man-child hijinks, offering a supporting character with the texture and internal consistency necessary to make his goofiness really sing, everyone else just doesn't fit. Sure, the material itself is laughably unfunny, but actors like Kerson and McGowen just possess too much genuine dramatic energy to make the comedy feel natural, making every extended bit or jokey aside feel particularly egregious and diversionary. Dern and Raging Bull 's Cathy Moriarty are pleasant to see anytime, but they aren't given much to do either.

Comedic relief is supposed to foster laughs, not eye rolls or yawns.

Wasted potential

But the film's biggest tragedy is how sharply it encapsulates the tragedy of Jeremy Piven's acting career.

On the surface, Mick is the perfect role to capitalize on Piven's strengths as a performer. He has natural comedic ability, his own unique kind of charisma, and the range to deliver serious drama within his signature persona. Few other guys are better suited to portray the inner conflict of a hooligan gone straight reconnecting with his roots.

But since Entourage , Piven has received no roles commensurate to the absolute meal he made out of Ari Gold. That show could have been a tipping point for Piven to move into more meaty leading man roles or, at the very least, a better string of interesting supporting turns. Instead, he only ends up in half baked, small release films like this one, movies that fail to live up to their own potential in precisely the way he has. To watch him play a guy who did get out and make something of himself while seeing how trapped he is in this cycle is somehow more painful than the actual conflict onscreen.

There are bits of the subplot between Mick and his childhood crush/current love interest Ali (Taryn Manning) that feel genuine and engaging, not unlike some of the better romances in even the silliest Adam Sandler comedies. Their work together, while housed in an otherwise middling picture, is a cruel reminder of the kind of movies he could be making but never seems to get to.

Perhaps this is a stretch, but there are few things someone like, say, Robert Downey Jr. does in any given Marvel movie that Piven couldn't also sleepwalk through. How has this dude not played a smarmy villain for Big Disney yet?

Maybe on some level he's more drawn to this kind of material and, despite the smaller cultural footprint, is actually happy making movies like Last Call . Perhaps the film, originally titled Crabs in a Bucket , just meant more to him on the page, or his agent has been explicitly directed not to campaign for higher-hanging fruit in Piven's name.

It's fun to imagine an alternate recent Hollywood history where the man has branched out into better, more fascinating roles, or at least simpler turns that make more money. But maybe making deeply unfunny movies written as love letters to bars is more his wheelhouse. If so, expect to see two to three more Last Calls every year until he retires.

MPAA Rating

Produced by, last call (2002), directed by henry bromell.

• AllMovie Rating
• User Ratings ( 0 )
• Your Rating
• Overview ↓
• User Reviews ↓
• Cast & Crew ↓
• Awards ↓
• Releases ↓
• Related ↓

Synopsis by Hal Erickson

Characteristics, related movies.

• Movie - Last Call - 2002

Last Call  (2002)  Against the Current / Fitzgerald

• Release Date: 25 May 2002 (US) (more)

The story depicts the final months in the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous American writer, which he spent with his young secretary and mentee Frances Kroll, who subsequently published a memoir ...Read more about their relationship.

• Henry Bromell ()
• Henry Bromell (Writer)
• Sissy Spacek
• Jeremy Irons
• Neve Campbell
• Shannon Lawson

Watch Online

• 2020 - Series

• Zhar El Batoul

• Shahid Qabel El Hazf
• 2021 - Series

• Hdach Hdach 11.11 2
• 2024 - Series

• Araabat Beirut
• 2023 - Series

• Natalie Radford
• Kathleen Munroe
• Marium Carvell
• Roman Podhora

The story depicts the final months in the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous American writer, which he spent with his young secretary and mentee Frances Kroll, who ...Read more subsequently published a memoir about their relationship.

• Release Date:
• US [ 25 May 2002 ]
• Censorship:
• Is this a coloured title?:

• Buy tickets
• 2023 Summary
• Riyadh Season 2023
• Now Playing
• Coming Soon
• Egypt Box Office
• Infographic
• Video Gallery
• Ramadan, Eid & Seasons
• Ramadan 2024
• TV series 2024
• Fitr Eid Movies 2024
• Riyadh Season 2024
• Adha Eid Movies 2024
• Egypt Cinemas
• UAE Cinemas
• Kuwait Cinemas
• Lebanon Cinemas
• Bahrain Cinemas
• Qatar Cinemas
• Saudi Cinemas
• Oman Cinemas
• Jordan Cinemas
• Iraq Cinemas
• About elCinema.com
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Privacy Policy

Reset Your Password

Last Call (2002)

Stream & Watch 'Last Call' Full Movie Online

Cast & Crew

Movie details, featured news.

Popular Drama Movies

Movie Reviews

Follow Moviefone

Movie trailers.

• Entertainment
• Celebrities
• Ticket Sales
• Promoted: What to Watch on Prime Video

Recommended

Breaking news.

Johnny Oleksinski

‘challengers’ review: steamy zendaya movie is this year’s ‘saltburn’.

• View Author Archive
• Get author RSS feed

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

CHALLENGERS

Running time: 131 minutes. Rated R (language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity). In theaters.

When the movie “Challengers” hits Prime Video after its theatrical run, I suspect the response will echo that of last year’s most controversial film, “ Saltburn .”

Like Emerald Fennell’s shapeshifting mystery, “Challengers” is, at once, artful, addictive and deceptive. The salivating viewer believes it’s one thing, becomes sure it’s another and then leaves with a different theory altogether.

There are more similarities. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (“ Call Me By Your Name ”), the movie features sexy, young stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in various states of undress, and their characters’ open ending will either intrigue or infuriate you.

Love “Challengers” or loathe it — and I look forward to the angry emails from the latter camp — you’ll definitely want to talk about it. And isn’t that half the fun?

The delish and devilish film, which jumps erratically back and forth through 13 years of events, tracks a trio of hotshot junior tennis players on the verge of going pro.  

There are best friends, and doubles partners, Patrick Zweig (O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Faist) — truly inspired fake tennis names — and the force of nature Tashi Duncan (Zendaya).

Despite being a teen with no grand slam titles, Tashi has heaps of high-profile endorsements, and it’s widely assumed she’ll be the sport’s next big thing. Think Coco Gauff a few years back.

The boys, competitive in more ways than one, lustily chase after the phenom, and later that night in their hotel room she seductively poses a challenge: The player who wins the men’s final gets her number.

Their scandalous story isn’t told linearly, though. More than a decade in the future, down-on-his-luck Patrick is sleeping in his car and playing small challenger tournaments to squeeze out a buck to buy dinner.

A devastating injury killed Tashi’s career, while unassuming Art, now her husband, has become a multiple slam winner who’s begun to struggle and is toying with retirement. Tashi, more concerned with victory than romantic love, is his vicious coach.

Then, Art and Patrick — now bitter nemeses — unexpectedly face off at the challenger tourney. And all sorts of dormant tensions between the three athletes reemerge.

Guadagnino revels in strange relationships, such as the taboo age-separation in “Call Me By Your Name” and the smitten cannibals of “ Bones and All .” 

On the surface, “Challengers” would appear to be your average smoldering love triangle film, but, true to form, it’s a lot more complicated than that. There’s a “Will they? Won’t they?” vibe with just about everybody. 

And tennis, wrongly seen by many as a polite country club hobby, is visualized as violent and animalistic — a bloodsport of vengeance and repressed desire.

Getting that across beautifully, the director and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom shoot matches in badass ways. During one point, we watch from the perspective of the ball being brutally pummeled by the two guys.

Using words rather than rackets, the three sly actors attack each other with their conniving and tactical performances. 

Tashi, who talks more about tennis than her marriage or child, cares solely about winning. Even sex for her is a form of match manipulation. Zendaya, perfectly cast, is siren-like and terrifying — a real “coffee is for closers only” type.

And O’Connor and Faist, who I bet will explode similarly to Barry Keoghan, forge a believable bond that, as their friendship fades, becomes even more intense.

Because “Challengers” is, at its core, a sports movie, the last scene will rile up some people because the final result is not entirely clear.

However — and I could be wrong! — after the high-stakes tiebreak in the end, I walked away certain that something vital had been fixed, not broken.

Share this article:

Advertisement