The Last Shift

After 38 years flipping burgers, the stalwart night-shift cook in a Michigan fast-food joint gets ready to retire by training up his successor in this US indie drama that casts an eye on a troubled nation. Racial and generational divides stand between Richard Jenkins's hangdog old geezer and young offender Shane Paul McGhie, who's on probation after defacing a statue and is far from thrilled to be on chicken-sandwich duty. Everything looks set for a standard serio-comic tale of friendship against the odds, with McGhie holding his own against the sheer class of his experienced foil. Yet writer/director Andrew Cohn (who's previously worked in documentaries) doesn't settle for the easy option. True, the plot shift that moves the story in an unexpected direction is rather clumsily handled, but the movie gains more depth in the process. The highly persuasive performances leave us with much to ponder, not least the suggestion that, for these two, as for America as a whole, mutual understanding will be a challenging process.