If an alien came down from outer space and asked you to explain why American cinema from the 1970s is so revered, you could do worse than simply showing them The Last Detail. Hal Ashby’s 1973 classic captures the desperate and irreverent spirit of its times. It’s a shaggy road trip movie with a naturalistic aesthetic and a magnetic performance from an actor who turned disillusionment and rage into star power.
Jack Nicholson plays Signalman Billy Buddusky, who refers to himself as “Badass.” Beware the man who gives himself a nickname. A lifer in the Navy, Buddusky and fellow sailor Mulhall (Otis Young) are assigned to accompany young seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) to prison, where he can begin an eight-year sentence for stealing $40. The steep punishment is due entirely to military politics; Meadows stole the money from a charity donation box that was run by the base commander’s wife. A naive teenager played with aching vulnerability by Quaid, Meadows is a victim of the establishment who is being made an example of simply to soothe feelings of a higher-up.
The assignment doesn’t sit too well with Buddusky and Mulhall, who, when we meet them, are already disillusioned with the Navy. The film doesn’t explicate their complaints; we just assume this isn’t the first time they’ve been stymied by internal politics. And their views don’t evolve much over the course of the film. As Buddusky and Mulhall try to show Meadows a good time before his incarceration—taking him to bars and brothels up and down the Eastern seaboard—they feel torn between their duty to the Navy and the injustice of their task, but they never think seriously about disobeying orders and letting Meadows go. They’re trapped in the system and in themselves.
It doesn’t mean they can’t have fun. On the page, The Last Detail is probably a bleak work, full of dark nights and desperate dawns, but Ashby and his star work together to bring some levity to the proceedings. Nicholson is cooking here, bringing every ounce of his sharp-edged charisma to his portrayal of a man revolting against the encroachments of middle age (Nicholson was 36 at the time of shooting) who fears he’s wasted his youth. Most famous is his outburst at the bartender who won’t serve Meadows and threatens to the call the shore patrol (“I am the motherfucking shore patrol!”), but more telling is his sad come-on to a young woman at a party: “There’s nothing like being on the sea,” he blandly extols. “Doing a man’s job.”
The script by Robert Towne (best known for 1974’s Chinatown) and Darryl Ponicsan, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, captures the sadness of life in the system, but Nicholson imbues it with his pied-piper charm, ensuring viewers don’t get dragged into the dark and making the plot more believable. Buddusky is the kind of man other men follow because they think he holds some secret to life, or at least to getting girls. Turns out he’s not very good at either. The playful score by Johnny Mandel, which sounds like military reverie played through an organ grinder, matches the movie inside Buddusky’s head, where he and his new friends have the world on a string, if only for a few days. But Ashby, a master of tone in Harold & Maude and Shampoo, never lets the wine get too bubbly. To that end, there’s Michael Chapman’s grim cinematography, which features diegetic lighting, creating a scuzzy mise-en-scene that shades the exuberance of his characters. Even when they’re having a great time, something feels pathetic about their exploits.
Although they eventually stop in New York (to start a fight with some Marines in a Penn Station bathroom) and Boston (to grill hot dogs on the Boston Common), some of the film’s best scenes are set right here in the District. The crew first gets off the train at Union Station, and they wander around the area looking for a restaurant. There are no shots of the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The pre-renovation Union Station looks like a slab of concrete. It’s a revision of the way Washington had previously been depicted in film—as a shining city upon a hill—that instead paints D.C. as just another prison for Buddusky and his friends to break out of. It’s the essence of New Hollywood filmmaking, which broke down our myths and revealed in their place a world of everyday losers who looked so much like ourselves that we couldn’t turn away.
The Last Detail (R, 104 minutes, 1973) screens at 11:45 a.m. and 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 14; and 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 15 at AFI Silver. silver.afi.com.