The Last American Hero

Directed by Lamont Johnson, The Last American Hero follows Jeff Bridges’ Elroy Jackson Jr. as he quits the family moonshine business to try his hand at stock-car racing. There’s ultimately never a point at which filmmaker Johnson, working from William Roberts’ episodic screenplay, is able to wholeheartedly draw the viewer into the excessively hit-and-miss proceedings, as the movie, which at least benefits from a typically strong Bridges performance, suffers from an arms-length feel that’s compounded by a curious (yet pronounced) absence of character development and context – which ensures, for the most part, that it generally remains impossible to work up the slightest bit of interest in or enthusiasm for the affable protagonist’s continuing exploits. The pervasively uninvolving atmosphere, which extends even to the picture’s copious racing interludes, is alleviated by the presence of a few admittedly engaging sequences, including a stirring scene wherein Bridges’ character confronts his moonshining father, although the entirely anticlimactic final NASCAR event is hardly able to pack the visceral, exciting punch Johnson has intended – which, when coupled with the growing emphasis on Elroy’s tedious relationship with Valerie Perrine’s Marge, ultimately cements The Last American Hero‘s place as a predominantly lackluster drama that could (and should) be so much better.

** out of ****