Perhaps because I don't, it always amazes me how well some really good authors (Shakespeare of course, and Ann Tyler come to mind) understand the complexities of the human condition. Fred Schepisi wrote the screenplay for "Last Orders" (he also is the Director) based on the Booker prize winning novel of the same name by Graham Swift. That is what this film is about - the complexities of people's dealings with each other and dealing with their own thoughts, plans, memories, and regrets.The title refers to a request Jack (double Oscar winner Michael Cain) left for his ashes to be scattered at Margate (a historic British seaside resort). Jack had an outwardly effervescent personality that caused friends he had made in his youth (he came of age just before the start of World War II) to remain life-long friends. Despite the war, in many ways those years of beginning their adult lives were the best in these people's lives. Perhaps that is the case for the majority of people.They had their futures to look forward to. One was a prizefighter who never had more than modest success. Another (the most steadfast of the friends) starts out as a funeral director and that seems to satisfy his desires. Jack, a butcher, inherited his business from his father and always dreamed that his own son would enter the business as well, but that's not what the son wants. He and his wife, Amy (Dame Helen Mirren), also have a mentally defective daughter who has been institutionalized since childhood. One of the significant conflicts is that Jack and Amy have opposite ways of dealing with that tragedy. Amy decides not to accompany the group when they take the ashes to Margate.Ray (Bob Hoskins), who Jack nicknamed "Lucky" because he pulled Jack into a trench half a second before a bullet would have struck him, owned a motorcar business but is more interested in playing the horses, with which he has had some success. He has a daughter who many years ago moved to distant Australia after falling in love with an Australian of questionable prospects, and they stopped writing years ago. Ray's wife had divorced him after she learned that Ray had assisted the newlyweds financially in their move to Australia.These loves and conflicts are revealed piecemeal via flashbacks as the individuals contemplate, and it is our coming to realize that relationships are more complex than what they seem on the surface.Not only is the screenplay based on a great novel, the cast is an ensemble of some of the most respected British actors, who all are great in their roles. They cast JJ Feild as the youthful Jack, and he strongly resembles Michael Caine in his early films. One warning: Some of the British colloquialisms and references may be unfamiliar to an American audience.

Graham Swift's 'Last Orders' is a fine story about a collection of old men and their baggage (in every sense of that word); translated into a movie by Fred Schepisi, it provides an outing for a number of fine British actors who do a good job in bringing their characters out from the page. The film as a whole, however, is less successful than its source. Partly this is because of the difficulty that films have in weaving as seamlessly between the past and the present as books can: the movie is always unambiguously in one time or the other, and switching between them, whereas the original could roam as freely as thoughts; perhaps the structure should have been more substantially altered, to make it more suitably cinematic (for example, the story of each man could have been told in succession). And maybe because of this, the quiet drama of the story of Ray never comes out quite as clearly as it does in the book. But it's still fun to enjoy the interactions of the cast.

Featuring a whole slew of England's most acclaimed stars, "Last Orders" focuses on a man's death and cremation, and how his friends and family remember their lives with him. As is common in British films, there's the issue of class, and how the characters have to stick by each other no matter what. The title refers to the man's last wishes that he get cremated and have his ashes scattered in the sea.Overall, this is a display of the cast members and director doing what they do best. To be certain, Fred Schepisi has turned out many good movies (e.g., "A Cry in the Dark" and "Fierce Creatures"), so he needn't try stuff like "It Runs in the Family". But anyway, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone do a perfect job.

From Fred Schepisi, director of Roxanne and Fierce Creatures, this is quite a good drama. Basically it is all about the friends of Jack Dodds who have been given the difficult "last orders" of scattering his ashes to the sea. These friends, Vic Tucker (Tom Courtenay), Lenny 'Len' (David Hemmings), Ray 'Raysie' Johnson (Bob Hoskins) and (I think) Vince 'Vincey' Dodds (Ray Winstone) on the journey remember the good times with their friend as butcher and pub mate. Sir Michael Caine as Jack in the flashbacks is the nice guy with a good personality. I cannot remember much of what happens, besides the scattering, and the fact that Caine and Hoskins are in it, but it is definitely worth seeing. Also starring Dame Helen Mirren as Amy Dodds. Good!