Rating: 
Summary: This is the real navy.
Review: I spent four long years in the navy depicted in this movie. The bleakness, tawdriness, and general sense of third-rate emptiness capture perfectly the true experience of enlisted navy life as I knew it in the late sixties and early seventies. Nicholson plays the quintessential lifer: angry,ignorant, arrogant,full of himself and yet empty at the same time. He prides himself on his hostility and knows no real friends. This movie should be required watching for potential recruits.Forget the slogans and the posters; forget the action, romance, and comedy movies about navy life: this is the real thing! There's another side to the real experience that is captured with wry accuracy in this picture. A literature of profanity, with its unique vocabulary and syntax permeates and finally makes bearable life in uniform. The Last Detail is rich with this twisted art form based on the F-word. Watch the interaction early on between Nicholson and the chief master-at-arms in the transit barracks. They got it just right.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so exciting!
Review: I would give this DVD 3 stars as it wasn't what I was looking for. It was highly disappointing.I had purchased this after checking out all the reviews posted by people who've bought it and I have to admit, although I'm a big Jack Nicholson fan, this movie's a big let down. Although the movie's good and Jack Nicholson has given a great performance, there's something missing in the movie. Its not a very entertaining movie if you are thinking so. Must be one of Jack's not so popular flicks.
Rating:
Summary: Jack's best
Review: I've never been a big Nicholson fan but this film did give me some hope. Above all else this is a Hal Ashby film and if you enjoy Harold and Maude or Shampoo you should check this out. The plot centers on two Naval officers who draw duty to escort a third to military prison where he will serve eight years for petty theft. The sentence is a harsh punishment for the crime but in the end all characters are trapped and must concede to the rules of their superiors. Ashby does a great job of portaying the imprisonment of all the characters in their roles which may seem particularly difficult in that this is also a road movie.
Wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Jack's best
Review: I've never been a big Nicholson fan but this film did give me some hope. Above all else this is a Hal Ashby film and if you enjoy Harold and Maude or Shampoo you should check this out. The plot centers on two Naval officers who draw duty to escort a third to military prison where he will serve eight years for petty theft. The sentence is a harsh punishment for the crime but in the end all characters are trapped and must concede to the rules of their superiors. Ashby does a great job of portaying the imprisonment of all the characters in their roles which may seem particularly difficult in that this is also a road movie.
Wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: the quintessential "squid" movie!
Review: if you want to know what REAL sailors are like, this is the movie. jack nicholson IS a SQUID! i have know many guys like him in the navy. i have been told, and i find it hard to believe, that nicholson was never in the navy. you cannot go wrong with this movie if you want to see one that gives the most realistic feel for what it's like to be a fleet sailor.
Rating:
Summary: Jack Nicholson's greatest role
Review: If you're even a casual Jack Nicholson fan and haven't seen the uncut version of this less-than-famous, boringly-named road movie, you haven't lived. To me, this is the ultimate Nicholson role--cynical Navy petty officer Billy 'Badass' Buddusky, who's assigned with a quiet shipmate (Otis Young) to escort a hapless young swabbie (skinny Randy Quaid) by train and bus from Norfolk, Va., to the Portsmouth, N.H., naval prison. You can imagine the adventures along the way. Raw, wild, comedic and poignant, 'The Last Detail' is an ultimate slice-of-life romp that's more fun to watch than its fellow contemporary classic, 'Five Easy Pieces.' To me, it's also far more substantive than the next Nicholson vehicle written by Robert Towne in the same period, 'Chinatown.' You may remember the 1960s marketing slogan 'Sean Connery IS James Bond. Well, Jack Nicholson IS Billy Baddusky!
Rating:
Summary: The Devil Is In The Details
Review: Jack Nicholson and Otis Young are two Navy 'lifers' killing time at Norfolk naval station when they draw an assignment to take a youthful convict, Randy Quaid, up to a Naval prison. Nicholson quickly figures out that the Navy is being very generous both with time and money on this trip and convinces the more stiff necked Young to run Quaid all the way to the brig and then enjoy a lesiure trip home spending the excess cash. The two old timers soon realize that Quaid's life is about to be ruined and instead cram as much experience into the time he has left as they can. The bleak photography and grim late fall early 1970's wasteland America backdrop make this picture a stark visual. Superior directing and talent-to spare acting allow for scenes built on such mundane routines as ordering malts and cheeseburgers in a diner to discussing the merits of Heinekin, classics in cinema. The scene in which Nicholson threatens a bartender who refuses to serve the underage Quaid is one you won't soon forget.
Rating:
Summary: You Can See Different Worlds When You Join the Navy
Review: Jack Nicholson is a performer with the rare ability to completely immerse himself in a chosen role and convince the audience of the stark reality of his performance. Playing Navy Signalman First Class Billy "Badass" Buddusky in Hal Ashby's 1973 film rendition of Darryl Ponicsan's novel, "The Last Detail" is a sterling example of that uncommon talent. Rough-edged but understanding, crude but compassionate, Buddusky and fellow "lifer" Gunner's Mate First Class "Mule" Mulhall (skillfully portrayed by Otis Young) are "detailed" as armed Shore Patrol guards to escort a young sailor, Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) from Norfolk, Va. to a naval prison in Portsmouth, NH in order to serve an eight-year sentence after being convicted at a court-martial of petty theft. The five-day journey northward is an adventure for all three. Sympathizing with Meadows's plight, apprised of his utter naivete and realizing his sentence far exceeds the severity of the offense, Buddusky and Mulhall conduct their version of a cram course in traditional male rights of passage--ranging from a drunken spree in Washington, D.C. to duking it out with Marines in New York City and getting their charge sexually initiated with a Boston prostitute--if for no other reason than to give him some taste of what he will not be experiencing for a long time and to teach him in some small way to assert himself as an individual. The novel and the film (which was released almost immediately after the book hit the racks) was initially hailed as a polemic against what many believed was the cold indifference of the military establishment. However, since that time, it has been judged more a compelling "slice of life" drama about the complexities of everyday human behavior and how it is shaped by our own decisions and by entities beyond our immediate purview. And, more importantly, it forces us to think about how our ever-more-complicated society is increasingly unable to find ways to help its young people constructively mark transition into adulthood. END
Rating:
Summary: Don't save this for LAST!
Review: Last Detail is one of the finest films of the 1970s. This film had Jack Nicholson written all over it. Nicholson's character is Naval Petty Officer assigned to escort prisoner to brig, and film takes viewer on a journey of the anti-establishment concept. The idea is to give Quaid's character(Meadows) one last hurrah before prison sentence begins. The acting and writing take the form of brilliant scenes that become as memorable as any other classic 70s film such as Easy Rider. One of my favorite scenes is where Nicholson tells the young prisoner all of the positive aspects of Heineken beer. The scene involving the religious ceremony is bizarre and hilarious. The film definitely seems to have taken aim at the humanistic approach. The escorting of a Naval prisoner to the brig, here, is no routine and cold duty. This is a "detail" that the main character(played by Nicholson) intends to get the most out of. Petty Officer Budduskey is the classic anti-hero (I was reminded of Paul Newman's Hud) playing the big-brother role. No check is kept on fulfillment here. That is what anti-establishment is all about and it unfolds in the form of "The Last Detail". Top notch in every form.
Rating:
Summary: Yo-Di-Lo-Di-Lo-Yeh-Dee-Hooooooooo!!!!
Review: Ohhh, Jack! How hard you make it for your fans to decide which one of your films is the best. This one ai'nt restricted to the navy, but to any enlisted U.S. serviceman, past, present or future. If only the chaser duties I did from Ft Bragg to Camp Lejeune were this classic....
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