Sundance 2020

[Chris Knipp]

A quiet study of poor people.


SHANE PAUL MCGHIE AND RICHARD JENKINS IN THE LAST SHIFT

THE LAST SHIFT (Andrew Cohn) - the director has made related documentaries - was originally an Alexander Payne project, and he did executive produce. Richard Jenkins plays a retiring career fast food worker in the "shit hole" town of Albion, Mich. who's changed, maybe, by training his young black successor (Shane Paul McGhie), a once-promising African American writer on probation for defacing a public monument, whose girlfriend's law school has been derailed too. David Rooney of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls this "a funny-sad chamber piece" and it evidently has subtle shifts and subverts expectations in interesting ways, though it just may be too drab and downbeat for many. Amy Nicholson of VARIETY alludes to a "gut punch" and says it's "wonderfully sad."