Last Sentinel review: A less than thrilling dystopian thriller

Last Sentinel (also known as Gateway 6) is a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Kate Bosworth, Lucien Laviscount, Martin McCann, and Thomas Kretschmann. Considering this highly-anticipated film’s all-star cast, intriguing premise, and Oscar-winning director Tanel Toom, it’s hard to understand where it all went wrong. And yet, the resulting film is nothing short of a snooze-fest. 

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Where can you watch Last Sentinel in the UAE?

Last Sentinel is currently showing in cinemas across the UAE, such as VOX Cinema and Reel Cinemas. It will probably be a while before the film hits streaming services.

Last Sentinel review

3

Underwhelming snooze-fest

Last Sentinel

WE LIKED

• Decent performances

WE DIDN’T LIKE

• Drawn out
• Too long
• The narrative makes little sense

What is Last Sentinel about?

Set several decades into the future, the film’s title card explains that climate change caused the oceans to rise to the point where only two small continents are left. And unsurprisingly, they are at war with each other. The military outpost set in the middle of a vast ocean stands in the way of one side attacking the other. Four people need to man the sentinel at all times, and the contract for the world’s least appealing military job is meant to last two years. 

We meet our four main characters three months after their contract was supposed to end. The relief boat is late, and the group is running out of supplies. Sergeant Hendrichs (Kretschmann) is the only one still committed to the cause and insists the rest of the crew carry on their duties as normal. 

Corporal Cassidy (Bosworth) is the second-in-command, and she’s in a relationship with the idealistic and rebellious Sullivan (Laviscount), while the fourth member of the dream team is their competent but pessimistic engineer, Baines (McCann). 

Hope is briefly restored when the crew spots the relief ship drifting toward them. But the ship is empty, and someone destroyed the engine. As tensions among the crew keep rising, they face the prospect of an enemy attack, or worse, being stuck in that rusty sentinel forever. 

The most exciting scenes happen in the first five minutes when the sentinel crew prepares for a scheduled storm. They manage to reach the shelter in the nick of time. From then on, the narrative almost stops.  

An underwhelming viewing experience  

Last Sentinel successfully made its runtime of 1 hour and 54 minutes feel at least double that. This is a long, drawn-out feature with no real payoff. By the time of the twist (if you can call it that), I had stopped caring. 

While the cast, Bosworth and McCann in particular, do a fine job with the script they were given, no amount of talent can draw blood out of a stone. In this case, the stone is boring writing. 

The entire film has these four people talking to each other, sometimes disagreeing, then continuing to debate each other. It doesn’t go anywhere. While there are a few scenes where you think something, or anything, is about to happen, it just doesn’t.

What makes this movie frustrating is how intriguing the premise is. We have four isolated and exhausted soldiers stuck on an outpost in the middle of the ocean with no way out. It’s hard to understand how the filmmakers managed to turn a Sci-Fi thriller with such a promising story into a boring melodrama. 

Unless you’re a fan of the lead actress, whose performance is top-notch, I can’t think of a single reason to recommend going to see Last Sentinel. And even so, there are better titles led by Bosworth on streaming platforms.