Movie Reviews, Music Reviews, and Game Reviews

Last Life in the Universe

Firstly, if you hate subtitled movies, steer clear of this one. On second thought, if I had to recommend one subtitled movie where you would do as little reading as possible, it would be this one. “Last Man in the Universe” is a VERY quiet Thai film. That silence is not a bad thing in this movie. It adds to the loneliness of the main character, Kenji. There is also enough dialogue in this movie to keep you interested and well informed.

This movie is about a man, Kenji, that wants to kill himself (very Seven Pound-ish, I know). He is a Japanese man living in Thailand. He explains that he wants to die simply to be at peace, not to escape anything. The movie starts off with Kenji standing on a stack of books with a noose wrapped around his neck. His yakuza brother rings the doorbell, disrupting Kenji from escaping to his eternal bliss. The movie goes on and eventually Kenji tries to jump off a bridge. This leads to an unexpected tragedy for someone else. This tragedy (along with others) connects him with a girl (Noi) who he ultimately develops a friendship with. This is basically the main focus of the movie. This movie does an excellent job on developing the relationship between these two people. The overall feel of this movie and their relationship is very similar to Lost in Translation.

This movie is not all great. I was loving this movie up until the end. It is way to ambiguous for more to love. I like to have some kind of closure in a movie. It’s not like the movie ends prematurely, it’s more like the ending is too open to debate. There is no TRUE end to the movie. Some interpretations to the ending will leave you wondering if you can trust the script. I would love to go further in depth about it but I don’t want to ruin it for people wanting to watch it.

The main parts of the movie coupled with the end make me give this a score of a 7.5 it’s worth a watch, but I wouldn’t bend over backwards to see it. It apparently has a following of worshipers so I would not be mad if you disagreed with me.

Score: 7.5/10
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