LAST SENTINEL - Mark Reviews Movies

Last Sentinel, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 23, 2023

The year is 2063, and after a long period of unabated climate change by way of humankind, only two continents remain. It's a technicality to even call them "continents," because they are the only two pieces of land that exist amidst a planet that mostly composed of ocean. That situation is horrible enough, and Last Sentinel adds one more piece of world building that makes too much depressing sense: The inhabitants of those two pieces of land are at war each other.

Such is the very simple setup of Malachi Smyth's screenplay, which narrows that simplicity even more. The plot unfolds in and occasionally around a structure that's located about smack-dab in the middle of those two continents. It's a military outpost called Sentinel, operated by a team of four soldiers or civilian volunteers for a term of two years.

The rationale for the existence of this edifice eventually becomes clear, because Smyth's screenplay, in addition to its admirable minimalism, is clever in the way it reveals the stakes of its tale without having characters explaining away as they await relief from their stint on the platform. It does such a fine job establishing all sorts of ideas and characterization and conflicts, but director Tanel Toom's movie gradually reveals that it doesn't have a plot as intriguing or thoughtful as its process of setting up this world.

Sentinel is the temporary home to that crew of four. Their commander is Hendrichs (Thomas Kretschmann), a hard-nosed stickler for rules and regulations, and his second-in-command is Cassidy (Kate Bosworth), who's slightly less strict than her boss but is otherwise defined by what we think we know about her.

There's also one more piece of information about her: She's having an affair with Sullivan (Lucien Laviscount), the rig's cook and head of communications. Sullivan is here for the pay, he says, as is Baines (Martin McCann), the final member of the team. The fourth crewmate is the outpost's engineer and a collector of all kinds of relics of the old world, now afloat on the vast expanse of ocean and drifting by the platform before a massive storm hits every few months or so—depending on how much more damage to the climate these two societies are still doing.

All of these details come with a level of natural ease in the screenplay, as we watch the crew scramble to take advantage of the most recent storm, when currents bring fish right by the outpost to be caught, and to avoid the assorted hazards that come from running this place (One nearly drowns, while another almost slips off a ladder). Tensions among the crew are increasing, because the job of fishing comes up empty and, as an even more frustrating issue, their relief crew is three months late.

Initially, Smyth and Toom seem primarily concerned with the workings of this outpost, the back story of the world as it stands, and the dynamics of these characters. The movie creates a decent amount of good will, too, because of the relaxed pace, allowing us to appreciate how much consideration has been put into imagining this situation of a near future, and a few clear-cut dilemmas that emerge. One is the mysterious appearance of an unmanned boat, drifting toward the outpost after that storm, but after some investigation, no one among the crew to figure out what might have happened to the vessel's crew—presumably the people who were meant to take over their posts.

Another is the "special weapon" housed within the structure, which Hendrichs nearly triggers out of an abundance of caution when that boat appears. While Sullivan and Baines plot to use the abandoned boat as a way to return home, Hendrichs becomes increasingly adamant about keeping everyone at the outpost, as Cassidy tries to play moderator to the two, seemingly irreconcilable parties.

The emergence of an actual plot, which becomes a mystery about the boat's crew disappearing and the potential that someone on the rig has a hidden motivation to do something or other to or within it, is so sudden and vague that it barely registers as the entire point of this tale. That's both a credit to quality of the screenplay's exposition, as well as the production in general (Inside and out, the outpost looks authentic, and Toom fills the place with an air of isolation, desperation, and rising paranoia), and the unfortunate side effect of a movie that seems far more interested in establishing background than in determining a course to follow in the foreground.

Ultimately, all of the work on the page and behind-the-scenes to create this world comes down to a fairly straightforward—and, since there really are only four suspects, not terribly difficult to solve—whodunit. There are bigger ambitions to Last Sentinel, especially in its appropriately cynical view of humanity's constant ability to screw up things beyond what would seem possible and/or logical, but the narrow viewpoint and hasty turns of the movie's plot don't do those ambitions any justice.

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