One Last Score – If… Dog… Rabbit (1999)

Directed by: Matthew Modine | 103 minutes | drama, thriller, crime | Actors: Matthew Modine, John Hurt, Kevin J. O’Connor, Lisa Marie, David Keith, Maggie Weatherly, Bruce Dern, Roger La Page, Zach Tiegan, Lisa Blount, Nick Love, Paul Fuemana, Louis Accinelli, Max Hernández, Jimmy Martell, Soane Filitonga, Susan Traylor, León Singer, Maria Elena Villalobos, Jessica Adorve, Carlos Palomino, Adam Aron, Richie Resseo

What do actors who want to broaden their horizons do? They are going to direct. Sometimes that works out well. Sean Penn scored highly with ‘Into the Wild’ and Clint Eastwood even won an Oscar for ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’. Sometimes forays behind the camera are less successful. Kevin Costner was praised to heaven after ‘Dances with Wolves’, but garnered only vitriolic reviews and jeering with ‘The Postman’. And then Matthew Modine. He made ‘One Last Score’, a film no one was talking about. Rightly so.

‘One Last Score’ fails on all fronts. The story is a hodgepodge of clichés and loose observations, around which Modine (who also wrote the screenplay) builds complete scenes. It is not clear whether he wanted to make a crime film, a psychological drama or a comedy. As a result, ‘One Last Score’ is a bit of everything and yet just nothing. What could have been an entertaining tidbit is pretentious nonsense that isn’t funny, exciting, or profound. Characters that don’t interest you do things that don’t interest you and you can see the denouement coming from miles away. It should have been a sledgehammer, that ‘last score’, but you just shrug your shoulders.

Although Modine himself is a competent actor, he fails to elicit good performances from his cast. That’s remarkable when you consider that the director had veterans like John Hurt and Bruce Dern at his disposal. Unfortunately, Hurt looks bored throughout the film (and blame him!) and Dern doesn’t get a chance to impress. Lisa Marie, the former muse of director Tim Burton, gets too much screen time. Marie may be a beautiful sight, but as soon as she starts talking, the spell is broken. Tim Burton knew that and cast her mostly in silent roles, but Modine lets her play his movie brother’s meddling sweetheart and that’s not a success. Marie spoons up her texts as if they are rolling by on the autocue or puts it too thick on top. Besides Modine himself, only Kevin J. O’Connor plays natural, but in practice that means that he portrays an annoying character believably annoying.

Also visually ‘One Last Score’ has little to offer. The camera system is static, which makes the action scenes in particular look clumsy. You would almost think they are part of a school project rather than a professional movie. The film would have benefited from a bigger budget. More budget means nicer locations, better stunts and the ability to redo scenes until they’re right. On the other hand, films like ‘Clerks’ and ‘The Blair Witch Project’ prove that you can get by with little money and an enthusiastic team of people, provided your ambitions do not exceed your budget. And enthusiasm and a sense of reality are precisely lacking in ‘One Last Score’. The film feels like an evening-filling ego trip by Modine, in which the rest of the cast and crew are dragged along unwillingly.

By the way, the original title of ‘One Last Score’ is ‘If… Dog… Rabbit…’. Modine only reveals the meaning of this intriguing phrase during the credits. Quite late, the distributors thought, and changed the title to the more marketable ‘One Last Score’. And that’s actually a nice metaphor. A cliché title fits this clumsy thriller better than something that hints at originality.