'The Last Thing He Wanted': Stalwarts couldn't save Netflix thriller from becoming less 'painful', say viewers

The political thriller premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month but Ben Affleck's first movie of the year failed to impress
UPDATED FEB 22, 2020
(Netflix)
(Netflix)

Ben Affleck has a number of films releasing this year, including Gavin O'Connor's 'The Way Back' and Adrian Lyne's 'Deep Water'. However, his film of the year, 'The Last Thing He Wanted' directed by Dee Rees, has received negative feedback from viewers.

The movie, which also stars Anne Hathaway, Rosie Perez and Willem Dafoe, released worldwide on Netflix on February 21. It follows the story of a veteran DC journalist, Elena McMohan (Hathaway) who tries to help her father Dick McMahon (Dafoe) and gets pulled into a risky and unfamiliar game, surrounded by live ammunition that is set against the backdrop of the Iran-Contra scandal.

The political thriller had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month and opened to negative reviews. The film currently has a rating of 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie's Netflix release has further received more negative reviews from viewers who called the movie "confusing". One viewer tweeted, "The Last Thing He Wanted was so utterly confusing and incoherent.. at first I thought I must have just missed something."

Another viewer opined, "Just spent the last 2 hours waiting for #Dateline by watching Netflix's The Last Thing He Wanted. Wow, that was painful. It's so bad, it hurt my feelings. Dateline has to salvage our nite! Seriously, that movie sucks the life out of you."

Viewers felt the movie strayed from its premise. A viewer said, "Just watched the Netflix movie 'The last thing he wanted'. I think it was supposed to be about the USA gun-running, but IHO it was nothing more than a cigarette advertisement. Watch it and you will get what I mean."

Some viewers felt that Dafoe was the saving grace of the film. One viewer wrote, "At least Willem Dafoe was in this movie. That distracted me enough from whatever else was going on. It really didn't make any sense and there was some laughable dialogue. A lot of plot elements just thrown in for the sake of it."

Another viewer said, "If you think instead of passion you just put a lot of money into a film and hire expensive A-list actors to perform in a crap story, then films like The Last Thing He Wanted is the result."

'The Last Thing He Wanted' is now streaming on Netflix.

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