Last Dance (1996 film)
| Last Dance | |
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Movie poster
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| Directed by | Bruce Beresford |
| Produced by | Steven Haft |
| Written by | Steven Haft Ron Koslow |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
| Cinematography | Peter James |
| Edited by | John Bloom |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $5,939,449 (USA sub-total) |
Last Dance is a 1996 film starring Sharon Stone, Rob Morrow, Randy Quaid and Peter Gallagher.
Cindy Liggett (Sharon Stone) is waiting on death row for a brutal double murder she committed in her teens, 12 years earlier. Clemency lawyer Rick Hayes (Rob Morrow) tries to save her, based on the argument that she was under the influence of crack cocaine when she committed the crime of which she was found guilty and that she is no longer the same person she had been at the time of the murder. However her death sentence is carried out.
Last Dance was filmed in Nashville.
The film was largely ignored at the box office, and suffered in comparison to the 1995 film Dead Man Walking, which was an Academy Award-winning drama whose treatment of the death penalty theme was still fresh in the minds of audiences. Sharon Stone was nominated for a Razzie Award in 1997 for "Worst New Star" based on her role in the film (as the new "serious" Sharon Stone).
Last Dance received negative reviews from critics. It currently holds a 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 21 reviews. Sharon Stone was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst New Star (as the new serious Sharon Stone) for this film and Diabolique, where she lost to Pamela Anderson for Barb Wire.
Judd Blaise of Allmovie gave the film two out of five stars.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four. He stated "This is potentially powerful material, and the movie handles it thoughtfully. It makes a good showcase for Stone. She does a good job of disappearing into the role. But the movie suffers from one inescapable misfortune: It arrives while "Dead Man Walking" is still fresh in our memory. That film was an unquestioned masterpiece, containing some of the best writing, acting and directing of recent years. "Last Dance" can't stand up against it. Too many of its scenes are based on conventional ideas of story construction. We can see the bones beneath the skin. The movie has a few scenes that really should have been rewritten before filming. Among the very best scenes in "Last Dance" are those leading up to the possible execution. Rick buys Cindy a dress she can wear into the death chamber, and as she unpacks it, the moment becomes very moving. Stone can be proud of her work in this movie, but the material is simply not as good as it needs to be, after "Dead Man Walking." That film reinvented the Death Row genre, saw the characters and the situation afresh, asked hard questions, and found truth in its dialogue. "Last Dance," by comparison, comes across as earnest but unoriginal. It might have seemed better if it hadn't been released in the shadow of "Dead Man Walking," but we'll never know."
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