Edgar Wright's reach exceeds his grasp in Last Night in Soho, but, at least, he is attempting to address more grownup concerns after the success of Baby Driver. Wright has a gift for combining music with his images and Last Night in Soho shows off that knack. Whenever Anya Taylor-Joy appears on the screen and starts frugging to a 60s pop tune amidst a stellar recreation of swinging Soho, the film achieves liftoff. However, the present day sequences with Thomasin McKenzie tend to drag, in part because Ms. McKenzie doesn't have the charisma of Ms. Taylor-Joy.
Wright also fails to add much originality and visual spark to the horror elements of the film. His cribs from Psycho, Repulsion, and The Shining betray an auteur not fully confident of his own storytelling abilities. This is too bad because Krysty Wilson-Cairns screenplay contains some interesting themes. The movie wants to evoke the dark side of the sexual revolution in Soho during a period when young women trying to make it in show biz could easily become sexual and economic victims. A worthy theme for a film, but Wright fails to make an impactful expression of this visually. The lechers who dog Ms. Taylor-Joy morph into faceless ghouls who torment Ms. McKenzie, but they never seem sinister, only faceless.
The presence of Diana Rigg who (partial spoiler alert) turns out to be an avenging angel of death for the "me too" miscreants of yesteryear, is a masterful casting coup that doesn't quite pan out. As Emma Peel, Ms. Rigg was the English epitome of a kinky boots sexiness that bubbled into media consciousness in the 60s. Dispatching baddies with a karate chop while trading bon mots with Patrick Macnee, Rigg embodied a kickass sexuality that demanded parity with the James Bonds and Matt Helms of the era. In Last Night in Soho, Wright reduces Ms. Rigg to ludicrously slashing youths with a chopping knife. A great pity and waste.
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| The late Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers |
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