Movie Review: THE LAST DEAL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 2nd, 2023 / 06:08 AM

THE LAST DEAL movie poster | ©2023 Scatena & Rosner Films

Rating: R
Stars: Anthony Molinari, Sala Baker, Mister Fitzgerald, Jeffri Lauren, Mike Ferguson, Kenny Johnston, Orion McCabe, Audra Van Hees, April Lang, Jamil Zraikat, Tim Willis, Linda Burzynkski, James Logan, Conner Floyd, Eliana Saenz
Writer: Jonathan Salemi
Director: Jonathan Salemi
Distributor: Scatena & Rosner Films
Release Date: February 7, 2023 (theatrical); March 31, 2023 (digital)

THE LAST DEAL is the kind of movie that major studios used to make as vehicles for the likes of Jeff Bridges or Sean Penn in their younger days.

As it is, the film is an indie, starring Anthony Molinari as Vince, a Los Angeles marijuana dealer who narrates for us. We might suppose that California Prop. 64, which legalized cannabis in 2016, would make life easier for people in Vincent’s line of work.

Instead, it hugely complicates things. Now, product is subject to regulations and inspections. There’s government corruption on the legal side, and very shady people on the old outlaw side. Vince has to compete with dispensaries and prescriptions.

The ins and outs of all this, as chronicled by writer/director Jonathan Salemi, are actually interesting. For a while, THE LAST DEAL feels something like a diligent NPR report, getting into the nitty-gritty of how the pot industry has changed. Because this impacts the characters directly, the facts have dramatic weight instead of simple informational value.

Vince is going broke, which makes him desperate. With friend and business partner Bobby (Mister Fitzgerald), Vince decides to borrow money from one group of gangsters to buy a large amount of “flower” from another group of gangsters. As we might expect, it doesn’t take long for things to go very wrong.

At this point, THE LAST DEAL becomes more of a conventional crime thriller, especially in its third act. After all the specifics about marijuana growth and distribution, what we get on Vince’s background is disappointingly general, despite a solid performance by April Lang as his concerned but uninvolved mother. There are also some third-act story flourishes that are more conventional than convincing.

Molinari delivers a persuasive central turn as Vince, who strikes us as a genuinely decent guy. We believe him as he struggles to puzzle things out and find the best option. We also get that Vince doesn’t seem to fully understand, until it’s too late, that just because the drugs in question aren’t “hard,” a lot of people involved with them are.

Fitzgerald is credible as the job-hopping Bobby, and Sala Baker has calm menace as one of the major players in the game.

Filmmaker Salemi gets a lot of good mileage of his Los Angeles County environs, setting scenes in little pockets where we can easily imagine this type of activity happening without police or public notice. It’s also handsome and makes use of areas we don’t often see.

THE LAST DEAL doesn’t wholly deliver on its early promise, but for fans of fare like CISCO PIKE, it’s worth a watch.

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