Sometimes an imperfect adaptation is still good enough to get the job done. Such is LAST EMBRACE (1979), a Roy Scheider thriller based on the book The 13th Man by Murray Teigh Bloom. As the film begins government agent Harry Hannan is involved in an incident that gets his wife killed because she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cut to months later when Harry is leaving a sanatorium after a nervous breakdown. He tries to rejoin his old job but meets resistance from his handlers who are not sure he is stable enough to be trusted with dangerous work again. Complicating matters is the fact that in the months he was away his apartment was sublet by a young college student who has moved in with her small collection of pets. Soon he is trying to understand a cryptic message written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic slipped into his apartment while also controlling the shaky physical reactions lingering from his breakdown. Also, his old employers realize they no longer trust him and decide he might need to be killed!
If this all sounds like a lot stuffed into a single film you would be right. I’ve not read the novel this was adapted from but I can sympathize with what seems to be an attempt to retain as much as possible. I’ve seen this kind of thing before and I find it fascinating. Boiling down a book into something under two hours can be a hellish task and usually entire chunks of complicating narrative is jettisoned to preserve the audience’s attention. What a reader might tolerate or even love only serves to distract from the forward thrust that a movie thriller needs to feel alive. Too much extraneous detail can force a viewer to lose the thread of the plot in a way that a book can deftly avoid.
LAST EMBRACE is an effort that works pretty well but the elements that would play wonderfully on the page are clunky onscreen. The late in the story introduction of a character crucial to the unravelling of the mystery of the cryptic note is a bit jarring even when played by an actor who is able to make him a welcome addition to things. And while the unexpected turn the story takes is amazing and clever, I’m sure it played much better in the book. The director handles things as well as possible and I really did enjoy the film but I can’t help but think that some trimming at the script level might have made for a more satisfying overall effect.
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