Last Days suffers from a downside to an overused narrative device. 

Like too many others, Justin Lin’s new movie starts at the climax, before flashing back to chronologically chronicle the events that culminate in the aforementioned beginning. 

But by virtue of the fact that the title is Last Days, devoting these opening moments to John Allen Chau’s first interaction with the self-isolated Sentinelese people primed me to expect the remainder of the movie to imagine what happened during the last days of his life on North Sentinel Island.

Instead, the screenplay focuses on fleshing out the documented portions of his preceding biography, and India’s investigation of his fatal trespassing. In so doing, Last Days chooses to mine the historical record for plot points, at the expense of creative invention.

(Obviously executing and filling in the spaces between these plot points requires creative invention…but a different, more common variety.)

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Styling Sky Yang to make his Chau look like an Asian Jesus…

Lord’s kiss.