Trying to live a quiet existence on the Portuguese coast after giving so much of his life to be a driver for the Chicago mob, Harry Garmes (George C. Scott) is given one last job to run a fugitive out of Spain and over to France, which, of course, becomes more complicated than it initially seems. First off, his “package,” Paul Rickard (Tony Musante), is traveling with his girlfriend Claudie (Trish Van Devere), who launches an affection for the aging Garmes that is both fatherly and amorous.
The Last Run (1971) exists as one of the great overlooked ‘70s thrillers in spite of itself. Alan Sharp’s (Night Moves, Ulzana’s Raid) script was not deemed adequate for MGM’s first choice director, John Boorman. This led to John Huston taking on the assignment, but he eventually stormed off set over continued creative frustrations with Sharp’s script. So, Richard Fleischer, one of the great journeymen from the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age, was brought on to save the project.
In Fleischer’s hands, what on paper plays as a boring set of clichés is as punchy as the aftermarket supercharger that Scott’s character installs into his (equally aging but steadfast) 1957 BMW 503. With Sven Nykvist (on his first American film) as cinematographer, Fleischer grounds what could easily be a runaway melodrama to action-packed realism; when Fleischer and Nykvist film Garmes gunning his 503 down a cliffside road on the Portuguese Riviera at the start of the film, they let the real limits of the car guide the sequence, with Garmes making the tires scream and brakes cook as the audience watches the backend almost slip out from under the car. Fleischer does not eschew realism to create something that looks good, but instead finds things that look good and films them.
Like trying to push the limit of a modified sports car next to a hundred foot drop, The Last Run balances its airport novel plot with Fleischer’s earthen texture. With its troubled production and mediocre critical reception, it was more or less doomed to be forgotten (and now, fortunately, rediscovered) when a milestone film with a similar overlay of realist aesthetics on pulpy storytelling premiered only a few months later. While William Friedkin’s The French Connection, which earned the relative newcomer several plaudits from the Academy Award, offered a glimpse into the criminal underworld that zeroes in on the desolation of a policeman, Fleischer finds the tragedy in the loneliness of a man whose life and death is dictated by people who use him as a means to an end.
The Last Run screens tonight, May 20, at Film Forum on 35mm as part of the series “Fleischer: père et fils.”
