Movie Review - Last Seen Alive

Director: Brian Goodman
Genre: Thriller/ Drama/ Action
Runtime: 95 minutes
Year: 2022
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Alexander, Ethan Embry, Russell Hornsby, Bruce Altman, Cindy Hogan
 
Description: Will’s (Gerard Butler) soon-to-be ex-wife Lisa (Jamie Alexander) mysteriously vanishes at a gas station. He delves into the town’s criminal underbelly while running from the authorities in a race against time to find her.

Review: Still fully in denial about his possible divorce, Will takes his wife Lisa to visit her parents. After a quick stop at a gas station, Lisa does not return to the car and disappears without a trace. When Will can’t find her anywhere, he calls the police, who come his way to help him.

Detective Paterson, who meets Will at the scene, urgently advices him to wait, when they start their search. But Will decides to go look for her himself, because he believes the authorities won’t be able to give him the help he needs.  

“Last Seen Alive” is a very standard, forgettable film. The concept of the lost wife and the desperate quest to find her is a difficult one to put a new spin on. This struggle is painfully evident in the film’s predictable plot. It is just too often reminiscent of its more successful variants “The Vanishing” or “Breakdown”, who did a way better job with this trope.

Gerard Butler is always an actor I enjoy watching, and he’s doing a solid job here. But his character makes the most unlikely decisions. After only 20 minutes of waiting for Lisa, he is already beyond all reasonableness. From the first moment he resolves conflicts with a lot of anger and violence. And he also seems to get away with all of it.

Throughout this ninety-five-minute search, there are exactly zero surprising elements. And there is an explosion in the film that looks very amateurish. With that, Jamie Alexander’s Lisa lacks warmth or humanity, so you really don’t care what happens to her, because she’s not a woman you sympathize with.

It’s an okay time at best, when you want to watch a standard film without having to think or care at all. “Last Seen Alive” is a very forgettable thriller.

Rating: 2/ 5