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The Last Station

Critics' Pick

(No longer in theaters)

Rating: R — for a scene of sexuality/nudity
Director: Michael Hoffman Cast: James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, Helen Mirren, Anne-Marie Duff
Running Time: 112 minutes
Reader Rating: Write a Review

Rate & Review

Genre

Drama

Producer

Bonnie Arnold, Chris Curling, Jens Meurer

Distributor

Sony Pictures Classics

Release Date

Jan 15, 2010

Release Notes

NY/LA

Official Website

www.sonyclassics.com

Review

There’s no serious drama to speak of in The Last Station, which centers on the final days of Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) as two momentous forces compete for the rights to his life’s work: his wife (Helen Mirren), who wants to keep his estate and copyrights, and his acolyte (Paul Giamatti), who wants the world to have free access to his Christian-anarchist-pacifist-ascetic writings. Adorable James McAvoy as Tolstoy’s new aide has to choose sides: It’s Giamatti’s jowls and priggishness versus Mirren’s moist eyes and Kerry Condon’s lovely breasts. Some contest. The movie has its evocative moments, but it’s so rigged on the side of anti-intellectualism that you’d never guess that Tolstoy’s late work inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The tony cast emotes like mad, but polished Brits are so temperamentally unlike Russians that every four-syllable patronymic sounds like iambic pentameter. — David Edelstein