After spending more than a decade on a film about growing up, Boyhood director Richard Linklater is turning his attention to life's later years with a heartfelt dramedy about three veterans struggling to accept the death of a young soldier.Amazon Studios dropped a trailer for Linklater's Last Flag Flying on Thursday, starring Steve Carrell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne as three Vietnam vets grappling with the death of one's son. Cranston plays a hard-drinking bar owner named Sal, who drops everything when Doc (Carrell) lets him know his son—who joined the Marine Corps just a year earlier—has died in combat. The two hop in a car en route to Mueller (Fishburne), an inveterate drinker and gambler turned sober pastor, to ask if their fellow vet could preside over the funeral ceremony at Arlington.Soon, though, Doc's simmering disillusionment with the war that claimed his son's life comes to a boil, and he decides he can't stomach burying the boy at Arlington. The three friends decide to take a road trip to a cemetery in New Hampshire, and—amid pit stops and hours on the road together—they begin to remember how they got so close in the first place.Just like the three stars involved, Linklater can do both funny and fucked-up: Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, and School of Rock span the gamut from ultra-serious to seriously goofy. From the looks of the trailer, Linklater's ability to alternate between light and dark—combined with Carrell, Cranston, and Fishburne's knack for the same—should make Last Flag Flying a dynamic, powerful film you'd be wise not to miss.Last Flag Flying debuts at the New York Film Festival in September before its theatrical release November 3.
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Richard Linklater's 'Last Flag Flying' Sends Three Sad Vets on a Road Trip
In the new trailer, Steve Carrell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne play three war buddies on a mission to bury one's fallen son, who died in a conflict the old hands can't understand.
