After years of directing big-budget action flicks as part of the Fast & Furious franchise, Justin Lin returns to a smaller drama for the first time since his breakthrough, Better Luck Tomorrow. Lin turns his attention to the fascinating true story of John Allen Chau, a Christian missionary who in 2018 skirted the law to spread his faith to North Sentinelese Island and the isolated tribe that has never had contact with modern society. That attempt got Chau killed, but it also turned him into a polarizing figure and cautionary tale. As interesting as Chau’s story is, Last Days offers a shallow understanding and at times seems fearful of taking a hard stance about him at all.
Penned by Ben Ripley and directed by Lin, Last Days stars Sky Yang as Chau, a regular kid with a suburban upbringing and two caring parents who instilled in him faith and work ethic. But somewhere along the way, and the film isn’t good at explaining how this happened, Chau became obsessed with spreading the word of Jesus to the “unsaved souls” in far off places. Chau treks around the world encountering people who have the same goal. Toby Wallace and Ciara Bravo play missionaries who take a more aggressive posture. They joke about the normal Christians who play by the rules. Instead, they ignore the laws and laugh at danger, barnstorming to places they were never meant to go and encountering people they are not allowed to try and convert. Chau takes all of this to heart, even undergoing a bootcamp that trains missionaries for dangerous interactions with people who could prove hostile.
Last Days confusingly bounces around in time and place without establishing when we are on Chau’s timeline. That makes it difficult to get a handle on his evolution, and any themes the movie wants to empart become muddled. Chau remains a cipher throughout, and the screenplay sticks to a surface level portrayal of him. Yang doesn’t get a lot to do or say as Chau, with his minimal performance too subdued to register. So the film’s focus is more on the things happening around him, including the struggle of a female Indian detective (Radhika Apte) as she battles a chauvinistic system while trying to find Chau and stop him from reaching the Sentinelese.
Lin seems to be on the right track early on, leaning into his action background for a thrilling scene where Chau first encounters the tribe. He is quickly met by a volley of arrows that nearly kill him, and sent his bible sinking into the ocean, a dire precursor to the fate that awaits him. Meanwhile, a montage of news headlines show the media hysteria over Chau’s actions and his ultimate demise. We also get a sense of the divisive reaction to Chau, with some lauding his bravery and dedication to his faith that he would give his life for Christ. Others saw Chau as selfish and reckless, endangering the lives of a tribe that has never known modern disease, technology, and other things that would fundamentally change their wy of life.
Unfortunately, Last Days doesn’t want to make a judgment and that is the weakest way to go when Chau inspired incredibly strong reactions. The result is a movie that doesn’t really tell us anything about Chau and why he became so radicalized and focused on the Sentinelese. I remember first hearing of Chau shortly after his death and becoming hooked into learning more about what made him tick. As fascinated as I was, I came away thinking Chau got lost in a “messiah complex” and it led to his undoing. Ultimately, what he tried to do was pretty terrible, but I wish he had lived long enough to see that and find another way to do things. There are better movies about Chau out there, such as 2023 documentary The Mission. But as far as Last Days goes, you’ll come away with a better understanding of Chau by reading the Wikipedia entry.
Last Days is open in theaters now from Vertical.
