He’s In The Jailhouse Now-Jack Nicholson’s “The Last Detail” (1973)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, 1973     

Jack Nicholson early in his acting career put together that wise guy, wise to the world, don’t take any guff and take a hit or two if necessary to prove the point persona that has endured for decades whatever his particular role. The film under review, the early in his career The Last Detail is a case in point where Jack play a world wise lifer sailor who is dragooned for special duty (temporary duty) along with another lifer sailor to bring a fellow sailor prisoner up to the Marine-run Portsmouth Naval Prison from the naval base down in Norfolk (Portsmouth now closed I believe and the reason that the Marines were running the place was that when the deal goes down the Marines are just soldiers for the Navy in those circumstances and hence fit for landlubber duty). 

Here is the way this one played out. Meadows, played by Randy Quaid, a dumb no nothing young sailor who joined the Navy basically to keep out of civilian jail had pulled a lame caper, had “stolen” the dough from the jar that contained charity donations (he revealed that he never even got the dough, forty bucks, which have even the two cynical lifers shaking their heads). This charity was the favorite of the commandant’s wife so they threw the book at him at the court-martial-eight years (maybe six with good behavior) and a DD (dishonorable discharge-the kiss of death then and now too). The two lifers, Bad Ass, played by Nicholson, and Mule, played by Otis Young, were assigned to bring Meadows to Portsmouth given a few days to do so. (They wound up taking various means of transportation which made me wonder why they didn’t just fly to Logan Airport in Boston and take the bus from there but that would have shorten the trip and film considerably)       

The trip up to Portsmouth is the heart of the story line as the two lifers began as seeing the whole affair as a burdensome lark and along the way became sympathetic to the poor goof Meadows plight. So given the time they had to get to the prison feted him with liquor, booze, and the whorehouse (he was so raw that he was a virgin) and a fateful picnic. All the things he had missed and would missed when in Portsmouth. Of course the taste of the good life got even the cluck Meadows thinking that freedom was better that what was ahead as they got to Portsmouth where they had one last request picnic-so he broke for it. The lifers grabbed him and the rest of the trip was by the book. After turning Meadows over the pair when back to Norfolk bitched out about the terrible duty. Jack Nicholson, nominated for the Best Male Oscar (as Quaid was for Supporting Oscar) showed plenty of his stuff here including going off on a bartender who would not serve Meadows.