Mudbound director Dee Rees stumbles with a confused
Netflix adaptation of Joan Didion’s political thriller about a conflicted journalist in the 80s
The Last Thing He Wanted, a package that must have seemed seductive on paper, with a red-hot writer-director, a stacked cast of Oscar winners and nominees and some juicy source material, has somehow mutated into a rather damp disappointment on screen, that initial, heady promise evaporating from every frame. It’s not quite the charmless catastrophe that others here at Sundance are claiming it is (and I’ve seen enough catastrophes here to know the difference) but it is an inarguable misfire, wrong or at least ill-advised decisions made at almost every turn.
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