Too Late (2016)

I want to thank the writers, producers, actors and anyone involved in the birth of this incredible film.After seeing only fifteen minutes of this film, I knew that hope beyond hope, there is some moron who will fund any kind of garbage like this one. No matter how mundane the dialogue, how stupid the plot, so long as there is one woman half naked and stupid men sucking on cigars. That's the thing! The premise is good. If only the film were. The actors are probably trying to get adjusted to the unbelievability of it all.This pathetic piece of garbage should never be destroyed. It should be used as an example of the incredible stupidity of this industry.

Too Late is halfway decent noir story anchored by a more than decent lead, but it lets itself get swallowed by its gimmicks. The movie is presented as a series of five twenty-odd minute one-take shots, with mixed results. The opening segment has some neat tricks behind it, including getting star John Hawkes from one end of town to another while maintaining action at a fixed point, and the reveals in the last are effective. But not all of the actors are up to the task, and the reliance on the one-take structure don't do them any favours; many of the scenes in the second section, in particular, have a student-play vibe to them, despite the presence of known names like Robert Forster and Jeff Fahey (Dichen Lachman, however, acquits herself well as a twist on the no-nonsense stripper trope). The nonlinear structure also feels like an afterthought to add some unnecessary extra novelty. The sidebars the movie somehow finds time for don't always work, such as a pair of minor drug dealers with no real purpose other than to pad out the takes and the film's annoying insistence on using film itself as a source of dialogue far too often. If it lost its gimmicks and shed a bit of fat, Too Late has the bones of a good gumshoe flick, albeit one a bit too reliant on stuffing women in refrigerators.

"I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!" Marie Windsor I have a neo-noir you can't refuse: Too Late. For a title vibrating with despair like that of The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place, The Long Goodbye, and A Touch of Evil, Too Late reeks of a dark, desperate, disorienting world where a soulful and soulless private detective named Mel Sampson (John Hawkes) searches for meaning among L.A.'s damned passengers. Many of those souls are dames, femme fatals if you will, beautiful in a cheap way but deeper emotionally than you'd expect and fraught with danger for anyone who cares about them.Shot in 35 mm Techniscope or 2-perf with five 20-minute uncut chapters, Too Late is bound to be a classic take on the detective genre memorable for such hard-boiled shamuses as Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. References to directors like Alan Rudolph and Robert Altman, not to mention Quentin Tarantino, certify first-time feature writer and director Dennis Hauck's goal to participate in the pleasantly depressive genre.Tired detective Sampson searches for a pretty young stripper, Dorothy (Crystal Reed). and eventually her murderer, now and then showing his long hair and strength but just as vulnerable as his biblical name suggests. As for her, well, dare I speculate she was searching for some rainbow's end? She was witty and vulnerable, "lost" in Elysian Park's Radio Hill of Los Angeles while encountering two drug-dealing thugs (Dash Mihok, Rider Strong) and a garrulous park ranger (Brett Jacobsen), all of whom could have as easily played in Pulp Fiction given their penchant for witty talk laced with cinematic references.Just as memorable and just as noir-naughty are Robert Forster's wealthy strip-club owner, Gordy Lyons; his dangerously desperate wife, Janet (Vail Bloom); and Dorothy's former stripper grandmother, played by Joanna Cassidy, who appeared in the cult classic Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, referenced here no doubt to geeks' glee.Although I've not mentioned much plot in this review, you get the idea that various fringey L. A. lost-soul types are the interest in this noir homage, at least to my nostalgic, crime-porned, cinema-drenched sensibility."One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines." Roger Ebert

film noir is alive and well in 2016. I was thinking veronica lake and alan ladd, but some one said lizabeth scott. anyway, it would be almost impossible to review this film without spoilers. you've got a pi looking for a killer, with flashbacks. for once the hero has the exact look necessary, no pretty boy here. the women are good, too. it is all familiar and yet new. there are also shades of Tarantino (as noted above). oddly enough there are some scenes which I normally would find extremely offensive to women and most likely would have walked out on, but somehow the set up here made it o.k. I enjoyed the film very much. it's a perfect noir.