Last Lives (1997) User Reviews

Campy, but not completely unfortunate due to the fine scenery....

[stampinqueen123 · 5/10 · 21 August 2007]

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

OK, I'll admit - had Billy Wirth not been cast as the bad boy for a good cause lead in this flick, I wouldn't even have bothered picking it up.

I thought C. Thomas Howell's acting was lackluster at best (check him out in every scene at some point sporting a pained face like he's constipated in a major way) and though I tend to enjoy Jennifer Rubin's work, she didn't show me much here. Judge Reinhold was non-convincing as the brainiac scientist from the planet Smartron (for obvious reasons - Lee Press-On mustache and using the same goofy delivery as when he had th brain of a preteen boy in Vice Versa). The plot? Well, let's just say I tend to agree with a previous review that questioned how Adrienne (Rubin) could possibly fight off Malacki's (Wirth) advances to get back to the loving arms of Aaron (Howell). I believe love is a powerful force, but ladies, have you SEEN the eyes on the "villain"? There just wouldn't have been any resistance from me, I'm afraid. I'd have flown the proverbial white flag, suffered through the "agony" of being Malacki's true love (and all that entails) and reflected fondly on the memory of my ex-fiancé once in a while. Once in a GREAT while.

This movie isn't THAT bad, but it wasn't in any danger of sweeping the Oscars, either. I'm not sorry I've added it to my collection, but it's not because of story line, direction or special effects. Sorry, guys - for me, this one is all about the eye candy. Period.

Could have been brilliant...

[Robert_W · 5/10 · 28 May 2000]

The concept surrounding this movie was/is unbelievable - that a bracelet of sorts could regenerate cells - ultimately bringing a dead person back to life...

This is all made possible by time-travel - a prisoner from the future manages to travel back in time with the aid of a scientist (Judge Reinhold)'s machine, looking for who he believes to be his soul-mate of sorts...

Unfortunately, Jennifer Rubin (who plays the soul-mate and wife to C. Thomas Howell) and her acting ability, coupled with the poor writing, in areas, really really destroyed the potential for this movie...

I have the utmost respect for C. Thomas Howell - I personally think he's one of the best actors around - and it's a shame to see him in a film that really could have been a success...

I feel that if a more talented director and more thoughtful screenwriters had entered this project, 'Last Lives' could have been brilliant...

[4/10]

Good idea .......

[rabishopp · 5/10 · 13 February 2001]

They should remake this film, perhaps with a different cast, perhaps with the same one but at least another few million in the budget. The story is interesting enough to deserve a makeover. It's been done before - LA Takedown and Heat for example. I'd grade this a "C+" and a "could try harder".

Give a 9-year-old a word processor.... and tell him to write a screenplay

[lazyfukkkah · 4/10 · 2 June 2005]

I give this film a 4 but I think its rather generous since all 4 points are earned for humor value.

This film can be summed up as such : Judge Reinhold gives a masterful performance as Merkin, a trans-dimensional inventor / scientist of sorts who chases a homicidal lust-driven maniac through a space portal that goes to Earth. Maniac and his two cronies come to Earth to steal the girl. All three baddies are armed to the gills with devastating weaponry whose clips never run dry. Scientist gives girl's fiancée some bracelets that, if worn during death, will recreate organic tissue and bring the wearer back to life. Fortunately there are a bunch of these bracelets so the fiancée can die a bunch of times. Judge Reinhold dies in a fiery car explosion, bringing a tear to anyone's eye in his Oscar-worthy performance about "being a man who has no fear of death". In the end, the cronies die, the main baddie gets his just desserts, and the fiancée gets his girl back.

This movie is a bona fide turkey. If this film had hit the box office when I was 8 years old, all the boys in my 3rd Grade class probably would have loved it. Unfortunately I would not show this to any 8 year old, in fear that this priceless piece of Americana would leave my young impressionable friend with a jaded opinion of American cinema. I have three bits of advice regarding this film:

TO THE WRITER: Next script, write yourself and don't let your kid do all the work.

TO JUDGE REINHOLD: Stick to Beethoven flicks.

TO THE PROSPECTIVE AUDIENCE: Unless you're like me and find humor in all the movies your friends can't stand, leave this one on the shelf and rent something much better, like Weekend at Bernie's.

Good Luck

[JimTom-2 · 11 January 2004]

If you can get past an early scene in which the kidnapped lady can escape her captors by simply sliding under the steering wheel and driving away in the vehicle her captors have all vacated, but--INSTEAD--chooses to leave the vehicle, run toward a cow pasture, tear half her dress off on a barbed-wire fence, and be quickly dragged back into captivity--GOOD LUCK! It is THAT kind of movie.

A decent temporal flick hamstrung by a stupid gimmick.

[DigitalRevenantX7 · 3/10 · 29 May 2013]

Story Synopsis: In a dimension parallel to ours, the convicted terrorist Malakai is being used as a guinea pig in a temporal experiment designed to send people across parallel worlds. Convinced that his dead wife exists in our world, he hijacks the experiment, sending himself & two cohorts over to our world. The scientist who created the experiment also crosses over, armed with a number of bracelets that can revive the wearer in the event of death. He uses one of these 'lifebands' to resurrect Aaron, the fiancé of the woman Malakai abducted, having being shot by him as he tried to save her. The pair then gives chase but the scientist is killed in the process. Before he dies, he passes the 'lifebands' to Aaron, who then uses them to attempt a highly risky & dangerous rescue of his love.

Film Analysis: Last Lives is a low-budget knockoff of the Terry Gilliam time travel flick 12 MONKEYS (itself a knockoff of a French new wave film known as La Jetee). Both films cover the same story - a criminal is used as a subject in a temporal experiment due to his obsession of a woman from another world or time, the experiment going awry because of this. The only difference is that while 12 Monkeys is an intelligent & darkly humorous time travel flick, Last Lives is a film with a severely limited scope.

As an action film, Last Lives is competent enough, with some decent car chases, shootouts & explosions. But it fares less well as a sci-fi film - namely due to the rather stupid gimmick of having the hero armed with special armbands that can help him cheat death. Sure, the gimmick is interesting but the way it is used here is quite silly - as the hero, Thomas C. Howell is killed so many times that it is not even funny. Okay, I take that back - the various ways that Howell kicks the proverbial bucket are so contrived that you will be laughing out loud over it. Case in point being the shack explosion, with Howell's scattered body parts reforming despite the explosion's effects (surely it would've affected the armbands as well?). The temporal experiment is just a MacGuffin used to launch the story, promptly being written out by the end of the first act.

The acting is a bit of a mixed bag. Howell is pretty good despite having some sort of Southern accent that affects his performance slightly. Judge Reinhold looks like he is embarrassed to be there while Jennifer Rubin seems to be under the influence of some serious sedatives. As the villain, Billy Wirth (who has proved himself to be a capable actor in the past) is given little to do, making the most of his role as a telepathic terrorist with a pair of silent henchmen & painful telepathy as his only weapon.

Poor film, no point.

[JaketheWonderDog · 2/10 · 26 September 2000]

Although the film has a good base of an idea, it has so many unrealized ideas that it is a pointless waste of time. There seem to be no redeeming features, and the relationships have no real emotion to them. The bad guy doesn't seem that bad, the good guy seems wishy-washy, and the only character that I liked was the cop. Disappointing.

Time Travel Hits A Wall

[maxie-14 · 8/10 · 11 July 2001]

Being a time travel fan I was disappointed in this film for a few reasons. I think the director could have thought out his ideas a little more, and the script, I had a feeling some of it was lost along the way. The actors needed more direction and input than they got.

I liked the ideas of the bracelet bringing people back from the dead, the trouble was the wrong characters kept getting brought back.

Jennifer Rubin is a gifted actress and the director and the writer did not help her at all in this film. She seemed confused and lost in a hopeless plot.

Billy Wirth did what he could with what was given to him in the writing and direction. It would be hard for any actor to pull off more than he did with this script. I know many Billy Wirth fans and women in general are still wondering why any normal woman would have a problem deciding between Wirth and Howell???

For the most part I liked the special effects it was the writing and length that killed me, I wanted to stop the film cut the car chase by 30 minutes and move on. Someone had a good idea but it went very wrong somewhere along the way.

Not a bad popcorn movie, will probably end up on peoples "films we hate but want to watch".

An interesting twist..

[maeander · 7/10 · 22 December 2005]

A terrorist from an alternate universe whose great love was killed, comes to this world to kidnap her counterpart in this universe. The counterpart is about to get married. The terrorist kills the entire wedding party during the kidnapping. A scientist from the alternate universe tries to stop him. That is the plot of "Last Lives", a low budget sci-fi thriller.

Basically, I really enjoyed this flawed film. For the money, the special effects are effective. We are all use to films where the antagonist keeps springing back to life after we think he has been killed. It's a very inventive twist when it is the hero who keeps coming back to life.

There is one major flaw with this film. The three leads, Jennifer Rubin ("Screamers"), C. Thomas Howell ("Soul Man"), and Judge Reinhold ("Fast Time At Ridgemont High"), have proved themselves very competent actors. The problem with the entire cast is that you soon realize each of them talk in a very wooden cadence. Since everyone does this, the fault must be that of the director, Worth Keeter. This coupled with some very bad background music detracts from the film.

That said, there is enough in the film for me to recommend it. A number of reviewers have savaged it. I feel it's a nice little film well worth a rental from Netflix. Rent it and decide for yourself.

Complete rubbish.

[pat_blank · 19 January 2003]

Not much else to say of this science fiction/action wannabe. The story is poor, the acting is poor, and pretty much everything else about this movie is poor. The only intriguing aspect of the movie, the bracelets that can bring you back to life, is wasted in the pathetic plot of the film. Long story short, skip this film. [1/10]

Harsh reviews but really half decent movie(spoilers)

[glennhi · 7/10 · 19 August 2007]

I fairly give it a 7 because of the novelty of this film.

What was the novelty?...well let me get philosophical here and tell you there were some deep and existential ideas to the films plot.

Have you ever played video games? Of course you have. Did you notice when you died, you got another life?...or a limited bunch of extra lives?...

Well THATS EXACTLY WHAT WE SAW FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN A MOVIE HERE. Maybe it has been done in some other ways in other films or shows...but this film literally made use of "bio-bands" or whatever they were called that restored a persons "life" if the person was blown up or injured. The heal devices were bracelets and with them, the main character had literally "nine lives" like the saying goes for cats who escape death...

And the kicker is in mythology we all know about "releasing the bonds of Orion" and perhaps you people may find interesting doing some investigation into the ancient mythological devices called "kesatot".

So, yes the movie needed "something" but I really couldn't figure out what...perhaps the direction was too "cheesy" or 80's movie-like (specifically the non-speaking goon helpers of Malakai)and needed a more mysterious flow/atmosphere...maybe more blinking lights...but, overall, all the acting was great (atleast good). I found the whole concept and plot of this movie satisfying and even romantic (lost loves through time).