Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1973

The Contenders:

Jack Nicholson: The Last Detail
Marlon Brando: The Last Tango in Paris
Jack Lemmon: Save the Tiger (winner)
Al Pacino: Serpico
Robert Redford: The Sting

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1973

The Contenders:

The Exorcist (winner)
The Last Detail
The Paper Chase
Paper Moon
Serpico

Time Served

Film: The Last Detail
Format: Movies! on rockin’ flatscreen.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, which means I probably should post the review of The Last Detail tomorrow rather than today. However, today is when I watched it, and that’s how things work. This is a film I’ve heard of before and knew virtually nothing about beyond the broad strokes of the plot and that it’s a film that features the legendary Jack Nicholson in his prime.

Those broad strokes of the plot are pretty much the whole film; there’s not a great deal of nuance in the story of The Last Detail. Two career Navy men are assigned the detail of taking a prisoner to lockup. And that’s pretty much it. The guts of the movie are that trip, which is far less than the constant escape attempts you might initially think. While there’s certainly some comedy here, this is not a comedy of errors or anything like a chase movie with two swabbies tracking down an escapee. Instead, it’s more of a road movie and a character study of the three men involved.