Following up the exuberance of Everybody Wants Some!!, Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying is a very different look at male relationships. With Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne leading the cast, the trailer is below.
Last Flag Flying finds Linklater adapting Darryl Poniscan's 2005 novel, a sequel to his 1970 tome The Last Detail, which itself was made into a film in 1973 by Hal Ashby, with Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Otis Young starring. Linklater has been trying to get this follow-up made since at least 2006, hoping that the surviving original cast might return for this linked story. That never came together, but the new cast is far from shabby.
Set in 2003, 30 years after they served together in the Vietnam War, former Navy Corps medic Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Carell) re-unites with ex-Marine Sal Nealon (Cranston) and Reverend Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne) on a different type of mission: to bury Doc’s son, a young Marine killed in the Iraq War. Doc decides to forgo burial at Arlington Cemetery and, with the help of his old buddies, takes the casket on a bittersweet trip up the East Coast to his home in suburban New Hampshire. Along the way, Doc, Sal and Mueller reminisce and come to terms with shared memories of the war that continues to shape their lives.
With the talents of the three on show, it promises to be an emotional, well-performed comedy drama. Last Flag Flying will open the New York Film Festival on 28 September and goes on limited US release on 3 November. There's no word on a UK date yet.
Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell And More Board Richard Linklater's Next Movie