Forget CGI firefights, air strikes, and over done love stories; the Last Man Club is a post war story about the most forgotten living casualties of war, our veterans.
The movie stars James MacKrell (Teen Wolf, Gremlins, Dallas..the list goes on) as Eagle a retired airman forced to live with his adult son and family in his golden years. Made to feel as an inconvenience, he develops a close relationship with his grandson Taylor, played by twelve year old Blaze Tucker (On Borrowed Time, Make It Rain), who gives Eagle some light and hope in life. One day a mysterious letter from Pete (played by Barry Corbin) an old friend with whom Eagle served with in WWII arrives, urgently requesting Eagle to come to Texas and meet him for one final meeting of the Last Man Club, a group of WWII solders from the same outfit that survived the war and promised each other they would continue to meet up until they all had died. It would be a journey like no other.
Fed up with the belittling at home, Eagle sets out to find the two other members and head to Texas with nothing more than his uniform, a few bucks on his debit card, and the car that belonged to his departed wife. Along the way he picks up a gorgeous damsel in distress by the name of Romy (played by Kate French) who is running from her past and ends up being far more helpful than the trouble that followed her. Eagle and Romy are able to evade the law, outsmart the Feds, and escape Romy’s sadistic ex to collect two more members of the club, Will (William Morgan Shepard) from a run down trailer and Grady (Richard Riehle) from a nursing home and head to Texas. News of the group’s intentions make it to not only the news outlets and the FBI, but to the staff at the psych hospital where Pete was living out the last of his days. Tragedy strikes the group yet they persevere to rescue Pete from the facility minutes before he is sent off to a high level psych hospital on the advice of attending physician Dr Derby (Steve Wilder) in an attempt to sabotage the rescue attempt. The remaining members of the club are reunited, and take off together for one final journey. as they always promised they would.
The movie is heart warming and full of real life lessons, including how terribly forgotten and misunderstood our veterans are. It is also loosely based on the real Last Man Club whose members were from WWI.
Image courtesy of teaser-trailer.com
Official movie trailer can be seen here:
The Last Man Club
Written and Directed by Bo Brinkman
Starring James Mackrell, Kate French, William Morgan Sheppard