Last Flag Flying actually exceeded my very tall expectations.
And I mean tall. With a cast like Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne, you’d already assume this would deliver. Add Richard Linklater—yes, the guy behind Slacker, Dazed and Confused, and Waking Life—and the bar shoots into the stratosphere.
Yet what he turns in here is one of his most conventional films. Not a head trip, not a cinematic experiment—just a straight-up, well-cooked meal. Think less molecular gastronomy, more perfectly grilled steak.
The setup: it’s 2003, and a grief-stricken ex-Navy Corpsman Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Carell) reconnects with his old Vietnam buddies—ex-Marine loudmouth Sal Nealon (Cranston) and buttoned-up Reverend Richard Mueller (Fishburne)—to bring Doc’s son home after he’s killed in Iraq.
That’s heavy material, but Linklater isn’t interested in a grim war movie. Instead, he gives us a road trip comedy-drama where the fireworks come from putting a holy man and a barfly in the same car and letting them go at each other for two hours.
Cranston dials Sal up to 11—he’s reckless, vulgar, and eternally needling. Fishburne matches him with quiet fire as the Rev, exuding dignity until he finally snaps. Their banter is where the film sings.
There’s that unforgettable U-Haul scene: Sal sneers about a rapper on the radio, asking Mueller if he feels ashamed of his race. Without missing a beat, Mueller flips it—because the rapper is Eminem. Sal, now on the back foot, gets roasted. It’s Linklater’s gift: letting a scene unfold like a conversation you could’ve overheard on a long drive.
Carell, meanwhile, is the quiet heart of the movie. He plays Doc like a man already hollowed out by grief. He rarely raises his voice, but when he smiles—it’s like sunlight breaking through after days of storm clouds. It’s the kind of restrained performance that makes the louder ones pop even more.
Of course, standing in their way is the uptight Lt. Col. Willits (Yul Vázquez), who embodies the military’s obsession with appearances. He wants Doc’s son buried in Arlington with a polished story about heroic sacrifice. The vets know better. They’ve been lied to before, and they’re not about to let history repeat itself. That push-and-pull—truth vs. propaganda, dignity vs. authority—gives the film its backbone.
And yet, for all its darkness, Last Flag Flying keeps bursting back into humor and soul. There are cell phone mishaps, road trip detours, and old men griping about the modern world. Cicely Tyson even shows up for a brief scene that absolutely breaks your heart.
Linklater himself said this isn’t really a war movie—it’s a road movie. That tracks. It’s about aging vets wrestling with what their service really meant, and how the ripples of war never stop spreading.
In fact, this whole story began as a sequel to Darryl Ponicsan’s novel The Last Detail (famously adapted by Hal Ashby with Jack Nicholson in ’73). Linklater couldn’t make an official sequel—rights tangles, Navy vs. Marines, all that—but he captured the spirit. Call it a “spiritual sequel” if you will.
Sure, the film can drag when it leans too hard into the “war is hell” sermon. But it always redeems itself with lived-in humanity. It never preaches so much as lets three men argue their way through grief, faith, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive.
I’ll put it this way: if I ever met these guys in real life, I’d happily sit down, crack open a non-alcoholic beer, and let the stories roll. Because this isn’t really about war—it’s about friendship, pain, and the strange joy of finding people who can still laugh with you even when life has knocked you down.
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