The Last Shot is one of those films designed to lampoon the movie business, and has been shelved enough times to make it's original point of blurring the lines between art and life all the more blurry and ironic. Which happily, adds much to the film's brilliant premise, but sadly subtracts from the number of people who're ever going to be lucky enough to see it. So here it is - a hoot of a send-up that boasts an incredible cast: Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Toni Collette, Calista Flockhart, Ray Liotta, Tony Shalhoub, Joan Cusack, Buck Henry - along with a brilliant group of character actors - recognizable only by their face. A film that must now be hunted down in your local video store and spurred on by good word of mouth. When you see the film - and believe me you should (it's hysterical) - you'll understand just how much it's struggle to see the light of day and it's resultant obscurity lends to the irony of the project.

We begin with Alec Baldwin an FBI agent willing to do most any thing to claw his way up the company ladder. While on a routine investigation in which he rather routinely sacrifices his index finger so as not to blow cover, he discovers that the mob is influencing the Rhode Island teamsters in order to get movies made cheaper. To wit he gets the brilliant notion to pose as a Hollywood producer long enough to slap the cuffs on these mobsters. He pitches the idea to his superiors - in much the same manner that all films are pitched and eventually gets a reluctant greenlight.

Relocating to Hollywood in order to gather the requisite information that will allow him to pass himself off as a producer, he first encounters an agent (hilariously drawn by Joan Cusack) she offers two bits in the film that are absolute golden - bend over, with spit coming out of your mouth funny.) Baldwin learns from Cusack that he's not going to fool a soul unless he has a script to peddle. Enter Matthew Broderick - a ticket taker and assistant manager type at the Mann's Grouman Chinese theater, whom like everyone else he passes on the street has written a screenplay.

Broderick is presently cohabitating with an aspiring actress (Flockhart) in an apartment made all the more affordable due to the fact that it is adjacent to a dog-boarding business to the stars. This has a particularly negative effect on their sex-life and Flockharts sanity in general. But Broderick placates her with his assurances that every agent and casting director in Hollywood boards their dog there. Coincidentally Baldwin meets the couple, as Broderick is performing a daily doggy service that Baldwin mistakes for an act of remarkable brevity. One thing leads to another and all the sudden Broderick has a very interested Hollywood producer eager to read his script. Quite a miracle transpires as it turns out Broderick has written a script that is exactly the sort of thing Baldwin's been searching for - one with words and characters and a story typed on paper.

It's actually based on a true story itself - a tear-jerker entitled Arizona based on his sister's struggle with cancer. A beautiful story of courage in the face of hopelessness, and the triumph of the human spirit, which might be touching and poignant if Broderick had a sister. Nevertheless, Broderick has been schlepping the script around town for ten years without so much as a call-back. Thus far the script has only succeeded in keeping his relationship with Flockhart alive through thick and Rin Thin Thin. Due, largely to the implicit promise that Flockhart would play the role of the sister just as soon as the film gets greenlighted. Which according to Broderick will be any day. This is the sort of role that they both are convinced will catapult Flockhart from obscurity to the red carpet. Ah the magic of Hollywood - though Baldwin's interest in the script is altogether fake - the Last Shot is based quite strictly on a true story.

Things progress in a whirlwind fashion and soon there is a meeting arranged where Baldwin suggests that Broderick bring along his representation. Broderick's representation comes in the form of his landlord, who may or may not be a qualified agent - but it doesn't matter because it's Buck Henry and Baldwin is prepared to ink a deal ASAP. Quite unexpectedly Baldwin not only expresses a desire to purchase the property, but has for some reason, become dead-set on having Broderick direct. Henry is hilarious as he tries to bluff his way through this negotiation - getting the speechless screenwriter casting rights, final cut etc. etc. Watching Buck Henry handle this scene is almost as funny as Joan Cusack taking on a panel of pinch-faced FBI Men. Just when things could not be looking any rosier for Broderick, he still must obtain the signature of his brother (Tim Blake Nelson) who co-wrote the script and is starting to get cold feet due to their fictitious sis. The one who traverses a barren Arizona desert in some sort of statement about her will to beat this disease. "O Brother What the Fuck Art Thou Thinking?" Of all the comic moments that this film offers, Nelson's is surprisingly the only one that falls flat. Strange considering his reliable talent.

At this point the movie really becomes Baldwin's as he must persuade his first time director to film Arizona in Rhode Island. After all it's Rhode Island where the criminal activity is taking place and as Baldwin puts it, "the similarities between Arizona and Rhode Island are quite remarkable." Obviously this is not an easy sell for Baldwin and there are some screamingly funny scenes where Baldwin, Broderick and a location scout take a trip through the rainy urban landscape of Rhode Island to further convince Broderick that R.I. is the perfect place to shoot the dusty, tumbleweed festooned desert vistas.

The comedy really starts to boil when Toni Collette shows up as a blonde actress Diva (Emily French) who's decided that this picture is exactly what she needs to resuscitate the legitimacy of her once flourishing dramatic career. A career that has fallen victim of late to several bad decisions that've found her heading into something of a Rebecca Demornay B-Movie tailspin. Baldwin is willing to ink the deal with French on the spot, but of course there is the matter of Broderick's main squeeze Flockhart who has considered the roll of the poetic cancer victim as hers ever since reading it some 10 years ago. Suddenly starstruck and caught up in movie making magic, Baldwin pleads with Broderick to make this one exception in his casting decision rights. "We have to think about our investors" he goes on (a fictitious group of Dentists). The problem is eventually sidestepped as the role of the spunky and hot young female Oncologist is beefed-up and offered to Flockhart - whom reluctantly accepts. Anyone that might doubt the comic chops of Toni Collette (forget about Connie and Carla) and take a look at Muriel's Wedding. As a ditsy Diva on the brink of has-beenhood - she is hilarious and wonderfully oblivious to her ego-centric behavior. What's more she's absolutely gorgeous.

Now that Emily French is attached to the project even the lowliest pencil pusher down the FBI food chain thinks he's in the movie business - and to hear these guys discuss the various merits of Arizona is just a damn hoot. Next to catch the Hollywood bug are the mobsters and it isn't long before wise-guys as deep as John Gotti himself feel the need to drop around set, to look in on their little venture. At this point it's hard to say if the movie is funnier or scarier as a result of being based on a true story. Hands down the funniest scene in the film and recent memory for me, involves Joan Cusack who is brought in as a consultant for the FBI. Her job is to familiarize the agents involved in the sting with the nomenclature and/or vernacular (I apologize if those to words are exactly the same thing) of the movie business. Cusack just goes balls out on these guys and it's just inspired stuff.

To reveal any more about the plot would be criminal. I will say that the DVD has some impressive extras - chief among them a face to face meeting between the guy that Baldwin portrays and the two guys that are represented by Broderick's character. This is the first time they'd seen each other or spoken since the sting went down and the jig went up over ten years ago. To hear them chat, more or less amiably as they catch up on what's happened with their respective lives since is fascinating stuff. Hats off, to an amazing cast and Jeff Nathanson who not only directed but adapted the screenplay from Steve Fishman's magazine article "The Movie that Never Was."

Fortunately The Last Shot is the Movie that Definitely is and whatever you do, go rent it.