By a coincidence, Kerry Fox stars in another current release, the New Zealand film The Last Tattoo, directed by John Reid (who, by a further coincidence, directed Carry Me Back many years ago).

But — oh! the difference of film and film!

The Last Tattoo is a thriller set in Wellington during World War II. Kerry Fox’s New Zealand nurse joins forces with Tony Goldwyn’s US Marine to sort out skulduggery involving the black market, corrupt New Zealand trade unionists and venal American officers.

Keith Aberdein’s screenplay glances at matters of historical significance, especially the sexual rivalries between New Zealand servicemen and GIs stationed here. Much of the plot hinges on tracing the carriers of venereal disease a suitably seamy metaphor for wartime cultural interaction.

As a recreation of 1940s New Zealand, it is much superior to John Laing’s dullish Absent Without Leave. Yet, as detective story, its clichés grate. Kerry Fox at the mercy of John Bach’s paranoid villain smacks of The Perils Of Pauline. Kerry Fox eventually lining up a suspect, and giving a verbal solution to the mystery, smacks of Hercule Poirot. Overstated dialogue and slackly-handled romantic interludes (sunsets and sea gulls) defuse the thriller premise.

For connoisseurs of the over-the-top, however, there is some compensation in Rod Steiger’s method acting self-parody as a pot-bellied, bald-headed general who seems to bellow “Goddam!” or “Jesus Christ!” every second word.

North & South Review by Nicholas Reid - March 1995