This Last Lonely Place: Visceral and Confronting Neo-Noir

Late night LA. A taxi-driver on the graveyard shift picks-up a fare. The passenger is edgy and well-heeled. He will pay good money for the cabbie to just drive while he waits for a call on his cell phone. It isn’t long before the edginess infects the driver. When can he dump this guy who is getting liquored up and more and more desperate? The booze loosens his tongue. He is in trouble. A financial scam. Big money. The driver has got more than he bargained for. Or has he?

Independent film-maker Steve Anderson’s new feature is a crowd-funded movie that looks like a big studio production. Helped by seed funding garnered through the Bogart Estate and a reboot of Bogie’s original production company, Santana Films, Anderson has brought some serious talent together in this slick production. Visceral and confronting it ticks all the boxes: tight scripting and dialog, fluid editing, solid acting, assured direction, an effective low key score, and visually inventive. The scripting and editing seamlessly handle flashbacks and exposition with real finesse. The cinematography of Patrick Mead Jones is lush and assured, with a real feel of a big city late at night. Jones deftly demonstrates you don’t need monochrome and deep shadows to portray the night soul of the metropolis. The three principal players, Rhys Coiro, Xander Berkeley, and Carly Pope, are pitch perfect in their portrayals and thoroughly convincing. A truly ensemble effort. Pope’s black widow is a master-class in malevolence.

This Last Lonely Place is unflinching and while it’s graphic violence is not for the squeamish, the pathology and greed that drive the narrative give it context.

The movie will be released on October 28. You can check out the trailer and if you have some spare lucre support the marketing effort at IndieGogo.