But Cohn is able to imbue it with an energy all his own. Grim as that may sound, “The Last Shift” is told with a light touch that allows the film to sneak up on you, and even its most painful moments are softened by heartrending solidarity this ruthless tragicomedy of unexamined lives is so evocative of Alexander Payne’s work that he briefly considered directing it himself, and still maintains an executive producer credit. Only one of them takes the bait, but the systemic antagonisms that develop across age, class, and racial divides work to keep both of them down.
Instead, “The Last Shift” explodes its central dynamic into something far more nuanced, as the blame that struggling people are conditioned to place on each other slowly boils into punitive action. A lesser film might have reduced Jevon to a simple truth-teller, and locked its two lead characters into didactic opposition, but Cohn doesn’t really care if it’s better to be a stooge or a rebel - not in a country where both roads lead to the same place.
From his perspective, Oscar’s isn’t a local institution so much as “a failing autocracy,” and Stanley hasn’t spent his life doing noble work so much as he’s stunted himself by conflating self-pity with pride. Jevon - who showed a talent for investigative journalism before he was sent to jail - immediately drills some holes into Stanley’s petrified self-mythology. Stanley thinks the whole world is against him, except for the one person who’s actually kept him down. He boasts about the creation of the “Stanwich” with a worrying lack of self-awareness, he talks to the laughing jocks who roll into his drive-thru like he’s their coach, oblivious to the fact that the joke is on him, and he name-drops the restaurant’s absent owner with a reverence that betrays his own lack of value, as if he’s not just talking about some guy named Gary who’s been exploiting his labor for the last four decades.
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Moments of dissonance are woven into the movie from the start, as Stanley flails to present his workaday dignity as a great American drama. As Stanley inches closer to “The Last Shift,” Cohn’s shrewd and agile script begins to crank up the volume until these quiet lives of desperation are distorted into something bracingly unexpected. Where to Watch This Week’s New Movies, from ‘Talk to Me’ to ‘Haunted Mansion’ What are the odds that such wildly different people - crossing paths as they circle the same drain - might learn something “beautiful” from each other in a way that reaffirms their complacency in the capitalistic system that hobbles them both? Jevon is a rebellious parolee who disrespects authority, hangs with a “difficult” crowd, and doesn’t seem the least bit interested in supporting his ex-girlfriend (Birgundi Baker) or their young son. Stanley is an old-fashioned sort who acts like he’s the mayor of Oscar’s Chicken and Fish, mistakes his new trainee for a criminal, and does everything in his limited power to be “OK, boomer”-ed into oblivion. And the evidence only continues to mount throughout the first half of the film, as each new plot detail conspires to flatter your cynicism. Sony releases the film in limited theaters on Friday, September 25.Ī breezy yet bittersweet little drama about an aging white fast-food worker ( Richard Jenkins) who’s tasked with training his young black replacement ( Shane Paul McGhie) after 38 years behind the counter of Albion, Michigan’s shittiest “burger” joint, Andrew Cohn’s “ The Last Shift” has all the hallmarks of an insufferably pat story about the search for common ground in America. Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
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