The Last Drop (2006)

Before The Monuments Men, there was a dopey little WWII art heist flick called The Last Drop. Alright, it's a tenuous connection but they're centred around the same idea: what better time for a heist than the fog of war? Well, chaos is indeed the name of the game with this scrappy, obviously low budget barrel of fun, both in terms of setting and the film itself. The cast is the main draw, as is always the case with B movies.. without a few names, some veteran charisma, pieces like this would just be bereft of any value. Well they got Michael Madsen, because every movie needs a Michael Madsen, getting more screen-time than usual here as an American military honcho on the hunt for some priceless works of art that have gone missing from Berlin. It's pretty much just a European wartime Rat Race, with various factions scrambling to find the loot and not get killed along the way. A platoon of Brits blunders across Holland, led by Sean Pertwee and including Tommy 'Chibs' Flanagan, Nick Moran, Rafe Spall, Alexander Skarsgard and more. A volatile German double agent (intense Karel Roden) pursues them all. Oh yeah, and Billy Zane calmly and deliberately poses for the camera as a Yankee operative with a fetish for wistful wartime romance, being as weird as Zane ever was. It all doesn't make a ton of sense or add up to anything much at all, but it's B movie bliss, and honestly I'd willingly watch this cast install drywall for ninety minutes, so one can't complain about a silly little war flick that's a bit rough around the edges. Good times.

Anyone expecting a good war film will be disappointed by "The Last Drop." This piece of fiction is incongruous all around. The plot is far-fetched. The CGI is so obvious and terrible, especially in the scenes of masses of gliders being towed by airplanes. The special effects aren't very good. The acting is poor to fair. The script, screenplay and directing are poor. In short, this film is a dud. Far too many things make it seem unreal to the point that most people watching it wouldn't believe it was anything like real life or action in World War II.I don't mind fictitious stories about WW II. There have been some very good ones. But the characters, acting, and presence of the players are made to be as real as possible. Not so in this film. Here are some examples. The men in the glider get a bumpy twisting ride after being cut loose and while being shot at by anti-aircraft guns. So, these Army troops are yelling and screaming. It could only be that way in the minds of 21st century movie makers who have no clue. The two young women in the opening scene are cooking for German guards. They are in the underground resistance. So, one of them urinates in the stew pot and the other spits in it. That was probably intended to be funny, but again, only in a modern mind detached from any inkling of the reality of such a situation in war. They never would have jeopardized getting caught, being punished or exposing themselves. But, that would have been in real life. The plot couldn't get much wilder or weirder. A Nazi SS unit is charged with removing a concealed cache of art treasurers to Berlin. A former junior officer to the Nazi major, whom he thought had been killed on the Eastern front, is alive and seeking revenge. So, he has made his way with a small band of German deserters, through German lines to try to get the loot. At the same time, a small top secret bunch of British soldiers veer off of the Operation Market Garden airborne assault of Holland, to try to capture the treasure cache from the Nazis. Within that group, there are some who want to keep it for themselves. Then, there is the American Army advancing on the location. The Americans are portrayed as an unruly bunch, it seems from the 101st Airborne Division. Those officers didn't behave anything like the loud-mouthed, rowdy characters we see in this film. The character of the Canadian pilot is almost a joke. He seems to be out on a Sunday stroll after their glider lands. Well, he is a crack shot though. Of course, the German major and a couple of others from the various groups are so invincible and expert marksmen that they just walk upright and pick off the enemy with their pistols while machine gun and rifle fire flies all around them. This is a British film made in Romania. It's an example of a story in an older setting but told with modern aspects of culture – speech, mannerisms, etc. Putting modern culture in a past time really destroys any effort at believability with an audience. And that just makes any good action seem out of place and unreal as well. Again, this is a big dud.

I have to admit, I quit watching this movie after about 15 minutes or so. And this comes from a guy who sat through "Hell Ride"! It was blatantly obvious that there was no way the filmmakers were going to be able to redeem the big pile of cow dung they had churned out so far.Everything from the script, the actors, the cinematography, the editing, and not to mention the laughably bad visual effects is just deplorable.The movie starts off with one meaningless scene with ze Nazis, quickly moving on to one where we're in a plane with the jolly good Allies. From what I can recall, everyone has a different accent, beautifully topped off with an officer whose accent I really can't place (is he South African? Scottish? English? Kiwi?). Zip boom bang, we're in the middle of a firefight with (supposedly) well trained soldiers ducking behind flimsy bushes as to shield themselves from ze Nazi's machine gun fire.By this stage, the game Klondike on my ipod was far more intriguing than this movie. Then again, I'd rather watch a colonoscopy than another second of The Last Drop again.Exactly when in the process did they discover that there was no way of salvaging this shipwreck of a movie? I would've loved to be in that meeting! Avoid this movie at all costs! See Kelly's Heroes (1970) instead, if you want a solid WWII gold heist movie!

Good grief what a waste of time. The premise for the movie is very good: troops going behind enemy lines to rescue valuable artifacts. Well, the idea might be good, but the production of this movie was horrible. The plot is hard to follow, characters difficult to identify, sound extremely substandard, and writing uneven. We actually only watched about 30 minutes of this film, lost track of who was doing what, who were the "good guys", and what was the goal of the movie. I guess it's always a risk to rent a movie with unknown actors, but this one looked good on the rental shelf. We were sorely disappointed, but thankful we had rented a second movie just in case...... Save your money, find old reruns of Combat, or better, watch great war movies like The Guns of Navarone.