Last Moment of Clarity has Sam (Zach Avery), living in Paris, in an empty apartment with a plant that he waters daily (he seems to want to be the titular Leon [Jean Reno] but isn't nearly as interesting). He is paranoid, waking with a start wielding a knife at one point, and in his closet, he has his very own wall of paranoia. Red string and everything. Suggesting that he is part of an elaborate conspiracy.
It is soon revealed that he is grieving his girlfriend Georgia (Samara Weaving), shot and blown up by some Russian bad guys. We are occasionally shown glimpses of his life before, usually in the bath with Georgia, where he hasn't yet grown the beard of sadness he wears for most of the film. His landlord and friend Gilles (Brian Cox) tries to support him to move on whilst sporting a very bizarre accent. However, when he visits the cinema (very Leon again) he notices a woman on screen who looks exactly like Georgia. Newly convinced that his girlfriend isn't actually dead, and has left him and started a new life as an actress, he goes on a slightly creepy journey to find her. Aided by Kat (Carly Chaikin), whom he meets conveniently and happened to go to school with. From this point we move from a Leon rip off to a Vertigo (1958) rip off. Only where Vertigo almost made sense, if you don't look at it too closely, this makes absolutely no sense at all.
Firstly, if you want to disappear, it seems like a strange choice to go to LA and become an actress. Thereby ensuring that your name, face, and private life will be broadcast to everyone, even people who don't care about it. Let alone the ex-boyfriend and Russian crime bosses who are looking for you. Secondly, it's really unclear what this couple did to have the Russian's trying to kill them in the first place. Something about the top guy, Ivan (Udo Kier) standing in a window wiping his hands on a towel meant that they needed to die. It's made slightly more clear when Ivan explains what he was doing, but this is fairly late on, before this all Sam knows is that he “saw something he shouldn't have”. It is so contrived and makes so little sense that whilst watching you wonder if perhaps there is more going on that we aren't being shown, some deeper levels of conspiracy that explain why the slightly creepy Sam has both Georgia (now called Lauren) and Kat wanting to sleep with him. This doesn't happen. It is just as silly as it appears.
I think the saddest thing about this is, despite her being the best thing in it, is that Samara Weaving is completely wasted. There is a suggestion here that she could have a future in something other than (really awesome) action-horror films, unfortunately, Last Moment of Clarity is unlikely to be the film to start the trend.
Dir: Colin Krisel, James Krisel
Scr: Colin Krisel, James Krisel
Cast: Samara Weaving, Zach Avery, Brian Cox, Udo Kier, Carly Chaikin
Prd: Stephen Isreal, Andrew Levitas
Music: Benjamin Patrick
DOP: Andrew Wheeler
Country: USA
Year: 2020
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Last Moment of Clarity is released on the 8th of March.
