Plot: The third of director Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, (or Blood and Ice Cream trilogy if you prefer) The World's End finds alcoholic man-child Gary King (Simon Pegg) trying to unite his four childhood friends for an epic pub crawl called The Golden Mile. Twelve pubs, twelve pints, all culminating at the final pub called (you guessed it) The World's End. After some finagling, Gary manages to convince Andy (Nick Frost), Paddy (Steven Prince), Oliver (Martin Freeman), and Peter (Eddie Marsan) to return to their hometown of Newton Haven and attempt The Golden Mile. However, things aren't altogether normal in Newton Haven anymore. Before long the five friends and Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) uncover a dangerous and potentially lethal plot whose ramifications may affect the entire planet.
Review: All great trilogies must eventually come to an end. Sometimes they end on a high note (The Return of the King) and sometimes they fall flat (The Matrix Revolutions). Director Edgar Wright's previous installments in the Cornetto trilogy, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz have become cult classics in their own right and exposed the world to Simon Pegg before he was J.J. Abram's Scotty on Star Trek. But would The World's End have the same depth and charm of the previous two installments?
Thankfully yes.
The World's End is the Return of the Jedi of trilogies. Smart, witty, fast paced, with a great plot, fascinating characters, and a lot of heart, The World's End isn't just everything you want in an Edgar Wright film. It's everything you want in a good movie.
The World's End was definitely a labor of love for Wright, one that took awhile to get to the big screen. (Six years passed between Hot Fuzz and this film.) It also may be his most personal, as he wrote the script when he was twenty-one. It's a story that captures the rebelliousness and limitless possibilities of seventeen and the reality and responsibility of forty. The World's End also demonstrates a very true fact of life--that some people never grow up, like the movie's main character Gary King. Furthermore, how do you deal with a friend who never grew up? Can you still really call them your friend? Can you really go home again as Thomas Wolfe once asked? The film even addresses the idea of free will. What's fascinating to me is that somehow Edgar Wright manages to weave these philosophical questions into a science fiction comedy film. Impressive to say the least.
From a directorial standpoint, Wright is at the top of his game. The 109 minute run time never once lags. Edgar Wright keeps the pace flowing nicely. Fight scenes, deep conversations, and just walks along the street blend together seamlessly. I honestly could have watched these guys interact for another half hour at least. You can definitely see the influence of other science fiction films in Edgar Wright's approach, especially the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Cinematographer Bill Pope manages to capture Wright's vision of small town life while simultaneously bringing action sequences to the screen on par with classic Kung Fu films. And damn if The World's End doesn't contain the best use of a Doors song ever.
For a film that possessed a relatively modest budget ($20 million), The World's End sports top notch special effects, especially the Blanks as they call them. (They are kind of robots who aren't robots. You really have to see it to understand. Too complicated to go into detail here). Steven Price's music was spot on as well, sporting everything from Primal Scream to Blur to The Sisters of Mercy. I'd seriously consider buying the soundtrack.
One thing I did buy into in The World's End was Simon Pegg's acting performance. In Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz Pegg gave us two distinct and different performances. For The World's End Pegg provides a third. Pegg's Gary King is the consummate man-child, a guy who's kept the party going for over two decades, long after his friends have moved on. King is the good time guy, the one who always has a joke on his lips and a beer in his hand. And therein lies the sad part. King is also a raging alcoholic and sadly The Golden Mile is really all he has left. Booze has destroyed everything in Gary's life, including the relationship with best mate Andy (Nick Frost). The tension between the two builds throughout the film and when the source of the animosity is finally revealed, it makes for an amazing scene. Pegg brings a depth and a pathos to Gary that I've never seen from him before. Anyone who comes away from this film thinking that Pegg is just Scotty from Star Trek needs their head examined. The man can flat out act.
As fantastic as Pegg was, Frost was equally good. In previous films we've always seen Frost as a flatulent lout or a screw up, but here he's a very straight laced family man. And it works! Frost was completely believable as Andy. In fact he was so great that he's probably going to be looked over for Best Supporting Actor come Oscar time, which is really a shame because he's very deserving of a nomination. Maybe I'm exaggerating here but I thought he was that damn good.
The World's End supporting cast is equally solid especially Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Freeman's Oliver has a couple scenes that had me in stitches and Marsan's Peter kills it as Gary's lovable lieutenant who's been pining after Oliver's sister Sam for years. Even Pierce Brosnan makes an appearance as the group's old teacher Guy Shepherd.
I cannot overstate how fantastic The World's End was. With apologies to T.S. Eliot, this trilogy ends with a bang not a whimper.
My rating: 10/10
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