“I could feel your eyes on me. I wasn’t scared.”
Just when you think Life has given up on you or you give up on Life, A streak of Hope dazzles your clouded life. A sudden strike of lightning which brings on shudders. A shudder which makes you realize that “ You are still Alive”. This starts on a chain activity, the heart which had stopped beating long ago suddenly finds itself doubling the beat. That breath which you had lost count, now numbers each and every second of your life. Time which stretched endlessly ahead , becomes the most precious possession.
In short Hope finds you just when you give up on it. They were times when you accepted the fact and realized that Life will go no further from here, and all you do is just count seconds to Death. And then He strides in, bringing along Life with him. He tells you that you still have a chance, he tells you that you are not as condemned as you thought so, he tells you that you do not deserve this. He will not let you fade away just like that and die a contemptible death.
Sharon Stone(Cindy Liggets) is a woman condemned to death for a double murder. Eleven years have passed and after four stays from the court against her death sentence, she has no hope in living more. She just waits for a day when finally she will see herself being executed. A drug addict , she was, she had committed the crime in the effect of dope. But prison has changed her for good. The first stable environment she ever gets in life in form of jail, she mellows down to a very stable person, developing a skill for drawings .Rob Morrow( Rick Hayes ) comes in as her Defence lawyer along with a hope of getting pardon for her. From there on clicks on a friendship between the Lawyer and the Prisoner (absolutely considered taboo in the professional world). Hayes notices the subdued, stable artist within her, no where near to the criminal which he so heard about. Hayes who had initially taken up this case with after being in dire straits and at the verge of being debarred from the Court of Law, finds him in a unique situation.
As he finds a friend and mate in a woman who is due to die in few days, he decides to move mountains for her. His determination to get clemency for her case ends him up being debarred. Yet he continues to do his needful.
On the query of his brother John ( Governor’s chief of Staff) that why is he doing all this
Aw, wait a minute.
Why not let it go?
Rick- You wouldn’t understand, John.
John- Try me.
Rick-Everyone gave up on her.
And he is going to be one that person who would not do the same. He is not going to let her die….
Sharon Stone is effortless in her role as a convict waiting for her time to get over. With minimal dialogue delivery , her facial expressions deliver the required emotions. A defeated expression with a little streak of optimism lurking behind. The frustration of knowing that there is no hope for her, a determined resolution giving away to submission in lieu of Hayes’ efforts; everything is portrayed brilliantly. Her elation and a sudden surge of hope are also evident in scenes where she waits impatiently for Hayes to visit her. The last few scenes and her expressions are going to stay with me forever.
Rob Morrow surprised me pleasantly with his performance, coz for me the foremost reason of watching this flick was Sharon Stone. But he appears no less. He effectively gives out performance of a loser cum lawyer, who had bad luck in tow. More than that his determination and displaying the nuances of a Man, who feels helpless yet gives in his best effort is marvelous. He has a subdued kind of strength which never gets too vocal or appears overboard at any point of time.
Bruce Beresford has given an apt direction to a story which appears to be picked up from a clichéd one. Though it seems like as a plot heard many times, the directorial effort keeps the interest of the viewer alive. With right amount of screen spaces, no drags in form of court scenes and not too much of stress on mushy ones, the director gives the best of his shot. Must say that Story never gives way to boredom.
On and on Last Dance may remind you of the famous flick “Dead Man Walking”, yet it has a few original moments of its own. For the first time I could feel the thoughts of a female convict, the way her life goes behinds the walls of the prison with numbered days, to her disposal. Hope surges in and out of the blue she gets a reason to live more. But fate has its own intentions….
Darling
Don’t you understand *
I feel so ill at ease
The room is full of silence
And it’s getting hard to breath
Take this gilded cage of pa
And set me free
Take this overcoat of shame
It never did belong to me
It never did belong to me
I need to go outside
I need to leave the smoke
’Cause I can’t go on living
In the same sick joke
It seems our lives have taken on
A different kind of twist.
Now that you have given me.
The perfect gift.
You have given me the gift.
For we have fallen.
From our shelves.
To face the truth.
About ourselves.
And we have tumbled.
From our tree.
Tumbled from our tree.
And I can almost.
I can almost hear
the rain fallin.
Don’t you know it feels so good.
It feels so good.
So let’s go out
into the rain again
Just like we said
*we always would